Quaranteam - North West Ch. 19

One of the men had his shotgun pointed at the foreman about an inch away from the guy's head, and the foreman was silently crying as the three rednecks continued to argue. One of the crew guys saw me and his eyes went wide. I raised my finger to my lips to try and keep him quiet, and he nodded more with a feeling of nodding than actually doing it.

"Fuck, this is taking too long!" the second raider said. "The others are probably gone by now. We need to go."

"Why? Ain't like the cops are coming out here," the third one said.

"You don't know that, idiot," the first one grunted.

"Fine. So we grab this guy and another one, and we get them to talk back at HQ," the second one said.

I grimaced and slid around the excavator fully, starting my as-quiet-as-possible run while they were busy arguing. If I could get up behind one and take them at gunpoint, I could probably talk the others down. Then it would be a simple matter of the crew helping me keep them pinned until I could get handcuffs or zip ties out here. Well, that and making sure the crew didn't kick the shit out of the rednecks.

Things were going great until the foreman looked up for the first time since I'd been watching and saw me rushing the group. He whimpered in a distinctly relieved way.

The rednecks turned to see what he was looking at.

And my leg gave out with a sharp needle of pain.

It's possible, if I hadn't been falling sideways as my leg stopped wanting to work, that I could have out-shot the first guy. As it was I couldn't get my rifle up properly and it was pure luck that the blast of birdshot went over my head as I collapsed.

After that first blast, it was chaos.

The one with the shotgun who shot at me died first, his body jerking sideways oddly as gunfire opened up and a bullet tore somewhere through the back of his jaw.

The second one, who had a hunting rifle, had pivoted as he saw me dropping but heard the crew of men scrambling to their feet and rushing the rednecks. He fired almost point blank at them and one of the construction workers stumbled, but the others tackled him and started going to work on him.

The third one, the one with delusions of an invading force coming to take over the US, pulled the trigger on his shotgun and blew the face off of the foreman. He swung around, raising his double-barrel towards me but then flinching and redirecting towards the rushing crew. I managed to get my rifle up and winged him in the shoulder, which spun him and gave Kyla a clean target to put two through his back, the exit wounds popping from his chest like weird bloody pimples.

The whole thing took less than four seconds, and in my mind I flashed back to the shootout scene in Django Unchained. I'd been in my fair share of gunfights, let alone the two in the past few weeks. I'd never seen one pop off so fast, and bloody, and methodical. The sprays of blood had been almost artful in that weirdly cinematic way.

But it wasn'treally over.

The construction workers we beating the absolute fuck out of that second guy. Steel toe boots were doing most of the real damage, though one guy had the foreman's hard hat in his hand and was smashing it down repeatedly using the hard plastic bill, and another had gotten the rednecks rifle and was slamming the butt of it down on him.

"Stop!" I screamed. I'd wanted it to be a shout, but it was too hoarse and slightly horrified to be a proper booming command.

I scrambled to my knees and used my M4 to help me get to my feet. My leg was wobbly but I could stand, and I staggered towards them, shoving the crew away from the bloodied body. I pointed to their fellow crewman, the one who had gotten shot by the rifle. "It's done! First aid, do what you can," I ordered them, my voice thick with adrenaline but now growling powerfully.

The five construction workers were bloodied, their eyes a little wild as they realized what they'd done, but one of them got the others moving quickly.

The bodies around me were broken. The foreman died instantly, that was for sure. The redneck that Kyla hit in the throat was letting out his last gurgling breaths, and the other she'd shot in the back was going pale as his life seeped out of him. The last one wasn't breathing either, and I couldn't really look at it.

"Harri," Kyla said, hurrying over to me from out of the brush. She rushed and stopped just short of colliding into me, her face a mask of concern as her eyes scanned me. Her frown deepened when she saw that there was blood seeping on my leg - I'd pulled my stitches for sure, and hopefully not anything worse. But she reached up and touched my head, and her hand came away bloody.

"I'm fine for now," I said. "I don't feel it."

"Harri, we-"

"Wait," I grunted, and I went down on one knee painfully next to the redneck who was shot in the chest. I leaned over him and slapped his face lightly to get his attention, and he winced and his eyes focused on me.

"Dying," he gasped.

"Yeah you are, you dumb motherfucker," I said, not even bothering to put pressure on his wounds since he was so close to going out. "Who the fuck are you people?"

"Dying," he gasped again, reaching up with the last of his strength like he was asking me to hold his hand.

I took it, even though I didn't want to. "Who needs to know?" I asked him.

The look in his eye told me he thought of someone, but I would have needed to be a mind reader to know who because his lips worked but no sound came out, and then there was the bone-chilling last breath as he died.

"Fuck," I grunted.

"Harri, you've got two gouges in your scalp," Kyla said, and I realized she'd been standing over me and looking through my hair.

"Birdshot," I groaned, blinking a little as the pain started to hit me. "I'll get it checked out. Boys, how's he doing?"

"Gutshot," one of the men said. He was the one who'd grabbed the rifle, his hands and boots less bloody than the others. They'd gotten their buddy turned over.

"Kyla, call Vanessa," I said. "Get someone out here for him. Gutshot is bad, but one bullet doesn't mean he dies if we can get him treatment quickly."

She nodded and took out her phone. I pulled out my own and found my hand was bloody as I started touching the screen. It was the redneck's blood from holding his hand. I dialled Miriam.

"Status?" she asked abruptly as she answered.

"One more possible vehicle on site, though I doubt it. I've got three dead hostiles here, look like... fuck, they look like rednecks. Maybe a militia group or something, though they only had really light arms. Shotguns and hunting rifles. Nothing automatic or military-grade. I've also got one dead and one seriously wounded civilian, plus more wounded confirmed."

"Do you know if the dead civilian was vaccinated?" Miriam asked.

I coughed and looked over at the men. "Hey, anyone know if your foreman was vaccinated?"

"Yeah, we all are," said one of the men. "Fuck, what does that mean, now?"

I ignored him and turned my attention back to my phone. "He was," I said.

"Fuck. OK," Miriam said. "I need- Shit. This is classified and fucking rude as hell to ask, but does he still have his testicles?"

I didn't have the brainpower at the moment to even be shocked by that question. "Yeah, he should," I said.

"Alright. I'm flying down with a crew of medics. I need that body ready for travel ASAP," Miriam said.

"Not the wounded?" I asked.

"They'll be taken care of, but I'm going to need to know who that dead man is."

"Do I- no, I don't want to know. I've also got a vehicle here. Oregon plates." I rattled off the plate number to her.

"I'll have someone start looking into it," she said. "Harri, are you-?"

"Hurt but OK," I said.

"You need to stop calling me like this," she said, and I could hear the frustrated little smile on her lips.

"You need to make some time to come see us when it isn't an emergency," I pointed out.

"We'll be there in under half an hour. Have the wounded brought to camp if you can move them, and make sure that body is ready for travel."

"Got it," I grunted.

She hung up and I looked up at Kyla. She was frowning as she gazed down at me. I tried to get up to hug her, but she put a hand on my shoulder and pushed me back down, shaking her head. "Sit," she ordered me. "Vanessa is sending a couple of trucks."

I sucked in a breath through my nose and felt it come out wobbly. My head was starting to hurt, and my leg was still hitting with that sharp pain, though it had mellowed out some.

"Uh, sir?" one of the crewmen said. Most of them were busy trying to fuss with their gut shot buddy.

"Yeah?" I asked.

"Is- um. Are we going to...?" he glanced at the bloody and beaten corpse.

"In this case? Probably not," I groaned painfully, leaning back until I was laying flat. "They were looters and threatened to kidnap at least one of you at gunpoint. I'm not lookin' to press charges here."

"Just don't start thinking doing this is a good idea," Kyla said.

"Yes, ma'am," the guy nodded, turning back to his friends. He had to be in his early forties. His calling Kyla 'ma'am' made me smile for some reason.

"What?" she asked as she looked down at me.

"Nothing," I said, shaking my head. "Nothing."

* * * * *

The good news was that, amongst the 75-odd women who had already been moved into the camp, seven of them had nursing training. Four of them had been working as nurses when they got the call about the vaccine, and one of them even had ER experience.

Kyla, the wounded construction worker and one of his friends were picked up in one of the white construction pickups first, while the bodies and I got picked up in the second one. I left the rest of the crew with explicit orders not to touch the redneck truck - if I was going to figure out who the hell these guys were and where they were coming from, I would need every clue I could get.

Back in the main camp I ended up sitting on a folding table that had been set up outside in the 'courtyard,' which was the open space in between the original portable office buildings and adjacent to the first big bunkhouse. I tried to tune out the chaos going on around me as I was seen to by one of the nurses and she wrapped my leg in new bandaging. There weren't exactly limited supplies on the site between the first aid kits in the offices and bunkhouses, but it was all standard supplies. No anaesthetic, and the painkillers were limited to acetaminophen. That was probably a good thing most of the time based on Vanessa's worries about drugs among the construction workers, but with a dozen men triaged and in pain from injuries ranging from bruises to concussions to gunshot wounds I wondered if maybe a small supply of morphine might be something I'd be securing sooner than later.

The nurse was quick about her work and my leg was bandaged tightly, then she moved on to checking my scalp but I could tell she was uncomfortable.

"Move," ordered another of the women, and she practically pushed the first one out of the way and took my head in her hand and started quickly looking me over. "You'll need a couple of staples," she said briskly. "Three lacerations, but only one is deep enough to be a problem. Head wounds bleed more than most. You get hit with something?"

"Birdshot," I said. "Ducked most of it, thankfully."

"Should have just kept your head down, let the security guy deal with it," she grunted.

"That would be me," I said.

She pulled back with a frown, then looked down at me more closely. To be fair to her, I looked like a mess - my vest was covered in drops of blood that I'd accidentally smeared around, and my shorts were yanked all the way up on one leg so that the last nurse could wrap my leg properly.

"Oh, right," she said. "Sorry, Sheriff. I, uh..."

"Harri," I said, offering her my hand. Thankfully I'd been able to wipe it off with some sanitiser earlier.

"Georgette," the nurse said, peeling off her glove to shake my hand back.

"Everyone triaged?" I asked.

"As far as we know," she said. "Yours was the last group to come in. Um... Thank you. My Duke was out there with you and he says you saved their lives."

I had to wonder how Duke was feeling now that the adrenaline was gone and he was remembering what he'd done. "Are we going to be losing anyone else?"

She pressed her lips together and shook her head, but shrugged at the same time. "Hard to say," she said. "The guy who came in with you is pretty bad, but I've got him stable and getting him fluids. If the proper medics get here as fast as they say they can he should live."

"That's good," I sighed. "And they will."

Georgette nodded. "I should get back at it."

"Go," I nodded.

I wasn't alone for long as Vanessa and her father Brent came to find me. Brent looked like he wanted to punch me in the face again, hug me, and shake my hand all at once. I could understand the feeling. Vanessa limited herself to one quick, but deep, kiss with me - the second since I'd been driven into camp - and then I was getting updates that changed even while we were standing there and more supervisors and foremen reported in.

The last truck, the one raiding the supply drop-off, had driven off sometime in between Kyla and I firing on the first one we found and the fight at the second. They'd made off with a bunch of raw materials meant for the third barracks that was being built, though the father and daughter duo had no idea what they would want with the stuff since it wasn't even good quality timber and just the prefab sheeting. It would delay the third barracks by maybe a few days at worst to get more shipped out. The variety of tools and other equipment stolen from the crews that were assaulted didn't make sense either.

"Stop trying to make sense of it," I said after listening to them come up with theories. "They were just getting whatever they could put their hands on. Were we missing anything back when the spin-up started again?"

Brent frowned. "Some of the crews reported equipment missing from the field. A couple of generators and spotlights, toolboxes from the back of trucks, that sort of thing. Not enough to make us think anyone had been through, just that things had gotten misplaced in the chaos of the outbreak."

"Well, some of it might just be missing, but I'd bet a truck or two came exploring at some point," I said. "We should have installed a gate or something to discourage people from taking a look where all the chaos had been going on. No one came up to the main camp, but I couldn't keep eyes on the woods and all the road-cutting areas. They probably figured more people here meant more stuff to steal."

We were interrupted by the sound of helicopters as three of them flew overhead, and Brent waddled off to wait for them to land in the clear area across the camp. I still hadn't met the woman he'd paired with, but either the stress of the job or her influence on him had Brent looking just a little slimmer than I'd seen him last time.

Vanessa hung back and she stepped between my legs as I continued to sit on the table, reaching up to grab me by my beard and pull me down into a kiss that left her face smudged with the dirt and blood that was still in the nooks and crannies on my own. "God, Harri," she said. "I almost lost you."

"No you didn't Vee," I said, deciding that if she didn't care about the mess then I didn't either and pulling her into a hug. "I'm fine, baby."

"If I don't walk away and get busy I'm going to start crying," she whispered to me.

"OK," I said and pulled back and kissed her cheek. "Go be the boss."

She smiled softly and gave my beard another tug before sighing and stepping back. "I'm going to need you tonight," she said.

"Looking forward to it."

She left me, and about three minutes later the courtyard was full of medics and doctors streaming in from around the buildings. Georgette started calling out directions for her triage system, and soon the worst of the wounded were being loaded onto stretchers and carried back towards the helicopters. I also noticed the body bag for the foreman - I never did learn his name - was quietly found and moved as well.

Soon I had a medic and a doctor looking me over, and I had a bottle of water poured over my head so they could clean my wounds and get a better look at them. The skin on my scalp got pinched and I had two sharp bursts of pain as they stapled it. Then the medic did something I'd never heard of before and braided the hair around each of the wounds tightly, pulling the scalp together. I couldn't wait to hear how the girls would bother me about letting some random Air Force medic braid my hair when I hadn't let them do it yet.

The doctor checked my leg, re-stitching it, and I'd been rolled over onto my stomach and had my ass up in the air as he double-checked the exit wound which I'd assured him hadn't ripped open.

"Harri, if I didn't know better I'd say you were taking advantage of my doctors," Miriam said from somewhere behind me. "Now isn't the time for your proctology exam."

"Harrharrharr," I said, turning to see her approaching. I'd noticed that all the medics and doctors were wearing basic medical masks, but the full hazmat suits hadn't made a show like before. Miriam was in her fatigues and had a medical mask on as well, and she looked put together and in command. "You finally going to let me cook you that steak or what?"

"Did you stage all this just to get me out here for dinner?" she asked with an audible smirk, coming over to stand beside me at the table.

The doctor let me roll over and sit up, and when I did Miriam leaned in and kissed me on the cheek through her mask. Thankfully the bottle of water over my head had led to me being able to wipe my face so she didn't end up looking like Vanessa.

When she pulled away Miriam immediately was all business and she recorded my fast report on her phone as we talked about emergency security logistics. It became apparent very quickly that this wasn't, or couldn't, be the sort of 'shut down' event that the outbreak had been. People weren't being moved out, and work had to continue. At the minimum, we needed to get a gate installed at the main entrance to the site, plus another gate for the utility access road. We'd also preferably see the main gate manned by armed guards. It turned out that wasn't much of an issue - Miriam had access to more airmen for security than just the ones in her building in Portland. They would stage them in the closest motel and get things rolling quickly. The gate wouldn't take much more effort, and she'd work it out with Brent.

The real problem was that if these looters and raiders were willing to drive right onto the site in the middle of the day, what else were they willing to do?

"We're talking about rednecks here," I said. "Motivated rednecks equipped with hunting gear. That means they aren't afraid of hiking in here from anywhere off-property. Hell, they could just drop someone off outside of view of the gates and hike it in."

Miriam blew out a breath and I could tell she was clenching her jaw rapidly as the corner of her mask fluttered a little. "We were hoping to not need to wall or fence this place in," she said. "Part of the reason your land was chosen to begin with was because it's so out of the way."

"Government didn't plan on rednecks, huh?" I asked. "Well, I've got one way to make sure they don't come looking."

"What, mount their heads on pikes by the road?" Miriam asked.

I shook my head, the vision of the construction workers beating the man to death still too close in my mind for that joke. "I track them down and deal with them," I said. "One way or another."

"Harri..." Miriam said.

"It can't be the military doing it," I said. "Well, unless you're willing to have that sort of thing spread like wildfire. It could be the FBI, but rednecks are already going to be suspicious of anyone who even smells like a Fed."