Chapter 8
Richard jogged back after several minutes talking with the group at the village. Dave watched the villagers cover Richard, watching through his rifle scope. The villagers appeared friendly toward Richard and shot one of the dogs in a pack that had approached Richard as he made his way across the empty field. Dave wondered if some of the villagers had the mental capacity to carry this out. That shot might have been heard at the house where the guns had been gathered and alert the Red Shirts at the house to the fact that the villagers were armed.
After getting back, out of breath, he sat down and explained that they had a few experienced soldiers and understood what needed to be done. The villagers believed they were a little too lightly armed for what they were going to do. They said Red Shirts at the house had a few three-o-three and three-o-eight caliber rifles which could punch through fences, sheds and some houses where the mostly smaller and lighter twenty-two caliber rifles used by the Red Shirts on the bikes he had taken earlier would not.
Richard explained to Dave that he had a steak in the outcome of this, if this went badly for the villagers, he would have a difficult time in both getting Emma out, or even going anywhere, as well as holding onto his shelter over the long term. After some convincing, Dave agreed and they decided to help the villagers lay siege to the house on the hill. "Evil flourishes when good men do nothing."* Richard said. *Abraham Lincoln
Dave needed to go back to his shelter and explain to the others what was happening, he also said that he would get the villagers a high powered three-o-eight that he had, pack some more food and water and put the powered goggles back in the shelter before they were discovered by one of the villagers or the Red Shirts if things didn't work out as planned.
He told Richard he would go to his shelter and he would go have a look at the house where the Red Shirts were and wait for him and the villagers. He could provide some intelligence for the siege when they met up before the villagers got close to the house.
Richard would bring villagers up to the house up a street that would keep them invisible to the Red Shirts balcony. They would watch for Dave when they got close to the house. Richard left to go back to the river and gather some of the villagers while Dave went to the shelter. Both were armed with suppressed weapons and safe from the dogs. The Red Shirts could not hear any of their gunshots if any dogs approached either of them.
The hatch door was opening as Dave arrived. Lisa and the others were sitting around in the living area. He sat down for a few minutes on a stool, explained to them what had happened, their steak in the outcome and said he would return before sundown before packing up a three-o-eight rifle, water, and some more nuts for him and Richard.
He exited the house by the backyard, hopping over backyard fences, taking the ladder they had behind the garage with him. The ladder could get him onto rooftops and was light and sturdy. He knew the neighborhood well now and believed he could get close to the house controlled by the Red Shirts without being seen.
After hopping fences for about a half hour while carrying the ladder and backpack, he stopped to rest and watch the Red Shirts three houses away and two houses up, perched on the highest point along an embankment on an elevated wooden deck at the back of their house. They could see villagers going across the park but the villagers could hide behind houses and fences as they moved into the neighborhoods, the Red Shirts would not guess that the villagers knew about the house or where they were headed.
The Red Shirts would soon spread out to check their blind spots in the neighborhood.
Three Red Shirts sat on the rear balcony with binoculars and a telescope mounted on a tripod. They were absorbed by what was happening at the village and could not see the darkly dressed Dave in the shadows under a split roof below looking up at them through binoculars. Dave stayed absolutely still while watching them. Their voices could not be heard but he saw them pointing toward the river and actively discussing what they were observing. They were obviously seeing something.
Dave could not see what they were looking at, he was not high enough. He slowly got off the roof and down the ladder on the front of the house, picked up the ladder, ran around to the back of the adjacent house and began to cut through backyards and make his way up the hill while staying concealed by backyard fences, other houses, shrubs and bushes. He needed to see what the Red Shirts were seeing and needed to hear what they were saying. He needed to be sure they didn't know the villagers had guns and didn't know that they would soon be under siege.
He reached a house at the top of the hill, took off his backpack and hid the ladder. He sat down to catch his breath for a minute and have some water. He crept up along the nearby houses high on the ridge, circling the perimeter of each one and listening carefully for voices or footsteps inside as he made his way toward the house that contained the Red Shirts. He climbed onto the roof of the house next door to the Red Shirts from a high backyard fence and settled on a slope of the roof where he couldn't be seen by anyone from the balcony or the road.
He looked down toward the river with the binoculars to see a group of almost twenty villagers walking across the park with shovels and sticks, making their way toward the houses. None appeared to be carrying any weapons so they were concealing this from the Red Shirts that they knew would be watching. A group of dogs had approached them and was scared off when they lifted garden tools into the air.
The villagers walked in a direction off to the left side of a path directly toward to where the Red Shirts were staying and soon disappeared into the houses. The Red Shirts had no reason to suspect they were on their way to lay siege to their house, or even knew where it was, or that they were even armed. Both Dave and the Red Shirts were blind to where the villagers were now walking and Dave guessed that the Red Shirts would not wish to stay blind. They would send a couple of theirs out to find and follow the villagers. He crept up along the roof to peered over the top see the front of the Red Shirt house.
He heard one of the Red Shirts on the balcony call out, "Bill, Tim!". Two minutes later two Red Shirts walked out of the front of the house. He quickly jumped off the roof to follow them. He would remain concealed by shrubs and cars at the front of peoples houses as he followed the two Red Shirts up the road.
Three dogs began to make their way toward Dave's position from across the street, he hid from the Red Shirts field of view. One of the dogs was shot by a Red Shirt, the other two ran away. The Red Shirts would be constantly looking around for dogs making it difficult for Dave to follow without being seen.
The Red Shirts found a high easy roof to climb and looked down the hill in the direction of the advancing villagers. Dave remained within earshot of them and overheard one "They have a gun! Wholly shit! Where did that come from?". Dave waited for them to climb down off the roof. They didn't shout the news over to the house where the rest were when they had the chance. Instead they had decided to go back to the house and tell the others quietly, a big mistake they made in Dave's favor.
They quickly climbed down. Dave heard both of them land on the patio stones after jumping off the low roof and begin to walk away. He turned around the corner bent down on one knee, lined up the Red Shirt following and knocked him down with a shot to the center of his back. The dead Red Shirts gun fell out of his hand and onto grass as he grabbed his chest. His body fell onto the sidewalk stones and his partner turned to the sound thud to see Dave with his silenced forty-five trained directly on him and his finger to his mouth, "Shush", he said to the Red Shirt.
The Red Shirt put up his hands quickly and Dave took the gun the Red Shirt was carrying out of his raised hand. He motioned the Red Shirt to move forward and turn to the right. "One sound and I kill you." he said. He directed him with hand signals and followed the Red Shirt toward the direction from which the villagers would see him as they came up the road.
The two moved along the front perimeter of a few houses until they encountered the first street, where the villagers would likely be com
ing up. Dave tied the prisoner to a work bench bolted to the concrete wall in a garage using some rope he found, lighted by a candle. The Red Shirt did not make a sound. He promised the Red Shirt that he would kill him if he made a single sound or effort to break free. He went outside, waited and watched to see the villagers and Richard come up the street. He climbed up on a fence to see where they were.
He jumped down when he saw them turn a few blocks down the road and knew which road they would be coming up to get onto the street along the crest of the hill and started walking toward the house. A few minutes later, he saw the line coming up and could identify Richard. He waved until one of them saw him. Richard turned and looked at him through his binoculars and the villagers pointed their guns at him. Richard put the binoculars down and motioned the others to put their guns down.
They quickly started making their way toward Dave as he waited at a corner house. Richard came over followed by a couple of the villagers while the rest went to a yard across the road that Richard pointed to. The two villagers introduced themselves as Jim and Tom and Dave began to explain what he had seen to the three of them.
Tom wanted to question the Red Shirt Dave had in custody. Richard looked at both of them and told them that he and Dave would be doing that. Richard then said "Tom go over there" as he pointed to the yard containing the other villagers "Get those guys into that basement. Tell them to wait for about an hour and stay quiet until we figure this out. You come back here between those two houses to meet with us afterward", pointing to a side yard between two houses.
Tom left waving the villagers to follow him as he led them into the house. Jim, Dave and Richard walked over to the spot and sat down between two houses and Dave explained more about the tactical situation. Richard looked at Dave "OK, you take Tom and make your way over to the other side of their house up though the houses on the other side of the street. Jim and I will move in closer from yards and houses on this side at the rear. You watch the north and west, we will watch the opposite corner from the rear. Shoot or capture, if you can, any Red Shirt leaving or entering the house. Sound OK?" He added "Do not attempt anything unless you are one hundred and ten percent sure of success. Zero risk. We cannot afford to get caught, we are outnumbered and out gunned. Kill any of them that see you. Rules of engagement have already been established with your experiences Dave. They shoot first whether they think you are armed or not and so do we, if we have to.".
Dave and Jim agreed and Dave asked "Should we go back and talk with my prisoner first?".
Richard got up and gave Jim instruction to stay put and to tell Tom what they were doing when he got back. He said the others were to stay at the basement and to wait there while the four of them went to lay siege and study the tactical situation further. Dave started walking out after Richard finished and Richard followed him into the nearby garage to talk with the prisoner.
The Red Shirt prisoner looked at them surprised and in fear as they quietly and very suddenly entered the garage through the door in the sunlight. The Red Shirt had to close his eyes from the bright light coming into the garage as they suddenly opened the door. They untied him and had him sit in a lawn chair illuminated by sunlight in a doorway while they sat in the darkness and began to ask him questions.
The Red Shirt became relaxed and was congenial to their request to the point of arrogance as he explained what they had all done. He explained himself as one of the fittest among the villagers at the rivers edge who was to survive. The Red Shirt added "In life you either eat or be eaten. Its a dog eat dog world. If we didn't do what we did, someone else would have and may have been a lot worse.".
The Red Shirt said "I would rather hang onto the pendulum that swings between the divine rights of man and that of kings than be pushed around by it.". Dave and Richard started asking questions regarding the Red Shirts tactical situation and weapons and heard nothing that surprised them.
Dave and Richard both knew the answers to most of the questions they were asking and the Red Shirt hadn't lied as far as they knew. Judging from his answers, Richard didn't believe that the Red Shirt would think of some of the questions as being a test. Dave whispered in Richards ear "This isn't one of their rocket scientists.".
The Red Shirt claimed not to know what was done to the water to make people sick. He confirmed and explained many of their own observations and said he could not answer some of their questions because he didn't know. He seemed to have reasonable and non conflicting explanations for why he didn't know some things as the questioning continued.
They learned that ten Red Shirts had gone to get water from a stream a few miles away and that they had left shortly after sunrise, almost an hour ago. Both were surprised to hear this and Dave whispered in Richards ear "told you". They listened and learned that each of ten Red Shirts would be carrying four one gallon water jugs back. Richard figured that the water carriers would be back in about an hour, knowing the wooded area better than Dave. The Red Shirt didn't seem to realize both he and the rest had already lost. It was like he was partly insane or just incredibly stupid.
Dave looked at Richard "OK, we have about an hour before the neighborhood has nineteen instead of nine Red Shirts. Lets go look at the house." They tied up the Red Shirt again by candle light and put him back in the dark. Dave said "Try and remember what I told you before about making any noise" before they left.
They ran back to get Tom and Jim and got one of the villagers to guard their prisoner from outside the garage and to not be seen or heard by the prisoner.
Dave took Tom up around through yards of houses across the street and to the house on the right side of the one the Red Shirts were in and got Tom to help him climb onto a roof out of the line of sight of the Red Shirts house. He saw Richard and Jim already positioned on a lower rooftop. Richard gave him the OK sign, he returned it and jumped down onto grass. The team of four men had a full view of the house and no one could leave or enter without at least two of them knowing. Most of the Red Shirts were now sitting or standing on the raised wooden deck overlooking their backyard which had an in-ground concrete swimming pool below.
Dave went to peer around the front corner of the house and saw a group of ten Red Shirts carrying water jugs and guarded from dogs by a single Red Shirt as they made their way toward the house in a single file line. He and Tom had to stay low to remain concealed behind a bush as they walked by. They quietly filed into the house through the front door. The water carriers looked exhausted from carrying that weight and unable to walk much further.
Dave listened to the muffled voices and footsteps, unable to discern what was being said. He heard a window open that sounded like a window from the back of the Red Shirt house. He moved toward the back corner to peer around to see Richard. The Red Shirts that had been sitting on the wooden balcony had gone inside the house.
Richard was looking from behind a shed in an adjacent yard, looking in Dave's general direction but not looking at him. Richard appeared to be watching the back of the Red Shirt house. Dave backed away from the corner and started to move to the front when he heard thumping noises and stopped moving. He heard a series of thumps about ten to twenty seconds apart above the chatter and laughter of the Red Shirts and he looked around the rear corner again and saw that Richard was watching what was happening.
The thumps stopped and Richard looked over at him and signaled him to stay put. Richard disappeared and within a few minutes had sneaked up on them. He threw a stone at Dave's back to get his attention, causing Dave turn around in surprise and nearly shoot him.
A wide eyed Richard went over to them and whispered that he watched ten Red Shirts being tossed out a back window of one of the second story rooms. They landed in an empty in-ground pool making that thumping sound. He said "I guess it can all be blamed on miscalculation. Some of them made the mistake of thinking twenty of them would be necessary when in fact only ten were required.". Dave said that they must have been the ones he saw carrying the water into the house f
rom the front. He added "Obviously the few Red Shirts in charge don't want unnecessary witnesses to what they were doing.".
They both decided to go back and tell the others, leaving Tom and Jim guarding the house. They carefully and quietly made their way back to the house containing the other villagers who had been waiting to be called and saw their house surrounded by dogs. Dogs were walking around the house and growling looking for a way in but had not yet started barking. Dave and Richard climbed up onto a nearby roof to look and decide what to do. Canines could attract another type of dog.
One of the villagers opened a window facing them and threw out doggie treats, one at a time. Soon all the dogs that were circling the house were gathered where Dave and Richard could see them. They had been distracted from seeing him by looking up at the window waiting for more doggie treats to be tossed down and fighting for the ones that had been thrown down.
Dave used his silenced three-o-three and shot two of them before the rest of them ran down the street afraid of the house. Dave and Richard ran across the road and into the house.
They went into the basement where the villagers were waiting in the near darkness and opened a window shade to let light in and explained the situation and what each of the villagers would be doing. Richard drew a map of the neighborhood and the positions he wanted them in using the back white pages of a book he found, the only paper he could find.
Dave and Richard discussed ideal positions and best route on getting to their posts to guard the Red Shirt house to some of the villagers. The rest would wait at the house quietly and would be called when needed. They didn't want a greater number of people outside than was required for the moment and they didn't have enough guns for everyone.
Four of them could ambush and take Red Shirts as prisoners if they left the house, on a signal from Jim or Tom. A few others would take up positions inside houses surrounding the Red Shirts and watch the house through windows. They could separate the Red Shirts that left the house and interrogate each one and figure out more about what had been going on inside the Red Shirt house. They would learn more and more about the Red Shirts as their numbers dwindled.
They left the meeting and hopped over fences, invisible to Red Shirts until they reached Jim. The three could see the rear of the house and the deck through small cracks between wooden planks in a tall fence in a neighboring rear yard. If all the Red Shirts could all be accounted for at the house he and Dave could return home, leaving the siege to the villagers.
The Red Shirts had gathered on the upper deck and one was looking through the telescope and describing the villagers at the river scarring off dogs with shovels. Seven were out on the deck and Jim believed two more to be inside. Dogs were wondering into the backyard and circling the pool while the Red Shirts sat safely above on the wood balcony watching the river village with their telescope.
Richard remarked that the Red Shirts were looking confident and were acting as if they felt secure. They were making lots of noise. Richard said that all they had to do was to maintain the siege and hope it ended before nightfall.
Richard wanted a few villagers to go back to the village and defend it from the dogs, armed in case this went on all night. He explained that if the Red Shirts heard the gunshots from the villagers scaring the dogs away they would send some of their own in the direction of the river to investigate. They could be captured as they left the house, maybe ending all of this before dark. Sooner or later a few remaining Red Shirts would realize they were under siege. Richard left to send four of the villagers to go and guard the river village from the dogs.
Dave and Jim watched all the Red Shirts leave the balcony and go inside the house. Jim wasn't prepared to stay into nightfall and to have to fight off dogs in the blackness while leaving his wife and child down by the river, vulnerable to dogs, just so the Red Shirts could continue to exist. He had family down there and so did many others, four guns were not enough to cover the perimeter of the village area at night with the increasingly experimental dogs.
Richard returned and they heard another thud and looked at the back of the house through the cracks in the fence. A Red Shirt went flying out the window and they heard another thud as he flew into the pool of bodies below. Richard said "I wonder if the question about honor among thieves crosses their mind as they are flying through the air.". Dave, Richard and Jim watched through cracks in the fence as another gagged and tied up Red Shirt went flying out the open window toward the pool below, landing with another thump.
Richard said that there should now be six left. They had the house and neighborhood surrounded with some of the villagers plus there was the four of them. Everyone stayed in position quietly.
Shots could be heard from a distance. The six remaining Red Shirts gathered on the balcony as they listened to one of the Red Shirts give a description of what was going on at the river as he looked through the telescope. The villagers Richard told to go back had arrived at the river's edge quickly. The Red Shirts now knew that the villagers at the river had guns. They had been relaxed and sitting or standing without guns at the ready then suddenly all went inside. Jim pointed out that they could have killed them all easily from where they were.
Richard insisted that they be given the opportunity to surrender. They decided to give the prisoner they had a note and send him back to the house inviting them to surrender. They would write out a note, tape it to his chest and have him walk back to the house with his hands tied. Jim suggested Molotov cocktails, Dave said they didn't want to burn down the neighborhood and start another Chicago fire.
Dave wrote the note on a piece of paper he had torn from the book, he and Richard left to get the prisoner. As the prisoner was walking up the sidewalk toward the house, two Red Shirts left the house, both armed and running. They ran past the prisoner without stopping and ran into a house far down the street. Richard and Dave immediately went to the house. Richard knocked on the rear door and they hid in the yard. The two Red Shirts came out, looked around, and after a few moments, found themselves with guns at their backs. They gave up their weapons.
They said that things were getting crazy inside the house. They were throwing guys into the pool, none of them were dead at the time they were thrown into the pool. They said that the remaining Red Shirts were planning to move to a house close enough to the river for some long range shots at the villagers and that they were thinking of ways of attracting more dogs toward the river area. They wanted to watch the villagers be eaten by dogs. It was getting too sick for them, they had to get out.
They went on to explain that they both had just gone along with everyone else. They thought that they were just going to steal a few of the guns and bikes at first. Things had gotten incrementally worse and they finally saw a chance to get out.
They said that as far as they were concerned the ones that remained inside the house were guilty of heinous crimes and they believed they should be shot. They expressed desire to see what they could do to help their friends in the pool and that the one they saw walking toward the house with his hands tied when they ran by was the brother of one of the leaders.
The two said that some of the Red Shirts in the pool had landed on the others and could possibly still be alive and just be staying still. They deserved rescue more than the guys in the house had deserved any kind of fair trial or to live. The two Red Shirts asked to go back to the house and to lead the others out onto the balcony. One of the Red Shirts insisted that this all happen fast, he was an ambulance first responder and needed to get to the injured ones in the pool quickly.
Richard and Dave agreed to the idea.
The Red Shirt that had the note taped to his chest had not come back out of the house, but he could be seen through a window of the house. As far as the Red Shirts in the house could determine from him, there were only two men in their vicinity. They would soon learn otherwise.
Richard and Dave had just gotten back into position with Jim when they heard a quick series of gunshots fr
om inside the house. The two Red Shirts that had surrendered earlier stepped onto the balcony, waved, then disappeared to reappear opening the downstairs sliding door, guns at the ready to deal with the pack of dogs that were circling the pool. Richard, Tom and Dave stood up and began shooting the dogs. The two Red Shirts put their guns down and climbed into the pool. Dave climbed up on rooftop of the house and signaled the remaining villagers and they all came into the backyard. Tom left to get the villagers waiting in the basement of the house where they had been left.
Richard asked one of the Red Shirts where the all the bikes were. He told them they were in nearby houses and would show him where he was done with the Red Shirts in the pool. Some of the villagers left to find them and take as many of them as they could back to the river before nightfall.
One of the Red Shirts in the pool began to move and asked to be untied. He was bloodied but could stand up and was not injured badly. The two Red Shirts that helped him up said that he was one who helped throw the others into the pool earlier. They got him out of the pool and two of the villagers took him into the house. Some other Red Shirts in the pool were seriously injured. Most had died from landing on concrete after the thirty foot drop from the second storey window to the bottom of the pool.
Jim went to Richard and Dave and thanked them and said that he and Tom could manage things. They would set up a hospital in the house, He and Tom would guard the Red Shirts and tie up the one that was uninjured and rescued from the pool and let the other two tend to the injured. The rest of the villagers could get bikes and guns and head back to the river and find doctors, nurses, or others that could help.
Dave and Richard sat out front of the house while the other villagers found the houses containing the bikes. The villagers gave them each a bicycle and headed down toward the river, most riders had backpacks and bags filled with guns, some pulled along additional bikes as they went. More villagers would have to help the next day to recover all the rest of the guns and bicycles.
Dave suggested that Richard meet him at a house he pointed out in two days to see how the village was doing.
Richard commented that how the people at the river got on could be determined by how they treated their prisoners. They had a partial litmus test for whether it would be safe to live among the villagers. The villagers would either live by law or by their leaders. Leaders would want to satisfy the blood lust of their subjects rather than obey known rational laws. Richard said that he would like to see how the villagers did but would probably not want to live in the area.
They watched the villagers ride away on bikes and rode away themselves after the last of them were out of sight. Richard waved Dave goodbye and continued on home, packing a forty-five to protect himself from dogs in addition to the rifle and supplies he had strapped to his back. Dave arrived back at the shelter minutes before dusk and found the rest watching TV when Bob opened the hatch to let him in. Lisa ran up and gave him a hug.
They all sat down while Susan made tea for them to drink and Lisa put an MRE in the microwave for him. Dave told them about all that had happened outside the shelter once again as they sat down. They needed to decide whether or not to tell Richard where their shelter was. He could keep an eye on it while they were gone, even if he didn't live there. Dave said they needed a few days for the situation outside to stabilize so they could leave and not be seen by any villagers traveling back and forth from the houses to collect all the guns and bikes that were stolen. He needed to meet Richard again before they left. They all needed to plan the trip to Emma's. He need to observe the villagers to see if they could remain living there in the shelter.
Bob commented once about erasing a project he had started because he realized that it wouldn't work and that it needed to be started again from a new perspective. "Erasing six months of solid effort and over 40,000 lines of code wasn't easy but it had to be done.". He added "We may have to leave this area for a long while or permanently.".