The Blue Ridge Resistance Read online

  “Shhhh, don’t say that, Mom. It’s not your fault. Daddy tried to save us. Daddy tried. We all tried,” she said as she broke down crying.

  Her mother reached up with what little strength she had left and held her by the hand. The young girl noticed that her mother had burns all over her body. They looked like cigarette burns. They had even burned her genitals with whatever it was they used. The young girl shook in agony for the pain her mother must be enduring, and for the horror that she may face the same abuse the next time they come for her.

  As her mother drifted back out of consciousness, the young girl laid her head on her mother’s shoulder and closed her eyes, once again praying to God for help. “Please God, if you’re there, please help my mother. Take my life if you must, but please don’t let them continue to hurt her like this. And if you aren’t able to send us help, then please just let us die. Please take us to Heaven with you and get us out of this hell on Earth.”

  Suffering from severe fatigue, she slipped off to sleep with her head on her mother’s arm. She dreamed about her father, and about the happy times they once had as a family. She loved her parents dearly, and could not imagine making it in this cruel and ugly world without them.

  She awakened at the sound of two men arguing in the hall. How long was I asleep? she thought to herself as she looked around the room in her disoriented state. She listened closely in an attempt to hear what the men were saying.

  “It’s my turn, damn it!” one of them yelled. “I was on watch when you had your last go. It’s my turn, and I’m taking the young one,” he again yelled.

  “Mom… Mom, they’re coming,” she whispered as she shook her mother’s arm, trying to wake her. She noticed that her mother felt colder than before. A sudden panic went through her body as she realized her mother was no longer breathing. “Mom! Mom! Wake Up!” she screamed aloud as tears ran down her face. “Mom, please don’t leave me here all alone! Please don’t leave me!” she continued to yell as she shook her mother by the shoulders.

  Hearing the commotion from within the room, the door swung open and two of the men entered. “What the hell?” one of them shouted as they walked over to see her pale, lifeless mother and the panic in the young girl’s face. “Damn it, Dog told you not to be so damn rough with them. We’ve got to make them last for everybody to get least a few goes at them. You’re missing your next turn for that asshole!” he shouted. “I’m taking the young one again while we’ve still got her.” He unchained and dragged the screaming girl out of the room while she desperately reached for her dead mother. “And do something with that damn body before it stinks any worse than it already does!” he added as he took the young girl down the hall.

  Chapter 21: The Spider’s Web

  As Evan and the men proceeded into what Evan jokingly referred to as “The Spider’s Web”, they could sense the danger in the air. There were just too many warnings about the type of individuals that may lie in wait for them not to heed. After they passed the last road that they could see on their map prior to the bridge, they knew they were coming up on the area where the Jackson women were more than likely taken. Evan pulled the tractor to a stop, shut off the engine, looked at Jason, and said, “Okay . . . Game plan?”

  Jason thought for a minute and then replied, “Unless we run across them prior to reaching it, I think we need to focus on the area where the containers and trailers are that Tyrone mentioned. If those guys come down and check on them at night on a routine basis—hoping to find travelers seeking refuge—we could use that to our advantage. We know some of the things they’ve done and what kind of people they are. They, however, have no idea we are coming, what we know, and what actions we are willing to take. It may be their home court, but we are the only ones that know there’s about to be a game.”

  “I like where you’re going with this,” Evan said. “Go on.”

  “Looking at the map, we know the containers are just before the bridge that crosses back over the French Broad to the south. After we round this last bend, we’ll be in the kill zone all the way there. They will have the position of elevation with woods for cover, and we will be in the open on the road below. There is an option we can take to catch the spider in its own web.”

  Evan said, “Let’s get the other guys in on this.”

  “Right on,” Jason replied.

  Evan and Jason then climbed down from the tractor and joined the other men at the back of the trailer. Jason caught them up on what he and Evan had discussed so far, and then said, “Here’s what I think we should do. What we’ve seen, so far, is uphill terrain to the left and the river to the right. Up ahead, there is wooded uphill terrain to the left, and wooded downhill terrain to the right before you get to the riverbank. If they are watching the road, and not the river itself, we can ditch the tractor in a secluded area on the last road we just passed. Then, we quietly hike down the riverbank, with the lower stand of trees as cover. Once we find the containers, we can figure out what we want to do from there, based on what we see. From what Tyrone described, they very deliberately and methodically drove down to the containers and cleared them one-by-one, looking for people. We can use that pattern if they repeat it.”

  “I like it,” said Evan in complete agreement with Jason’s plan.

  “Me too,” said Nate. “Let’s do it.”

  “Hell, yeah,” said the others as everyone got on board with Jason’s plan.

  With their new plan in mind, they unloaded the ATVs and hid them in the brush alongside the road the best they could. They then began backtracking with the tractor and trailer, to leave them hidden on the side road they had just passed. They did not want to lose their entire cache of supplies in one fell swoop if someone found the tractor while they were away. Having the ATVs stashed in a different location would at least give them some form of transportation in the event that happened.

  Once everything was in place, they all suited up with their tactical gear they had brought along. Each man’s loadout was different, based on his weapon and ammunition of choice, but they were all ready for anything that may come their way: from first aid, to ammunition, to emergency food in the event things took longer than expected. The events of the recent past had forced people such as them to think about all possible eventualities every time they undertook such a challenge, and these men were ready for anything.

  Jason rallied the men together and said, “Okay, guys, let’s travel down the riverbank via a bounding overwatch. Let’s split up into two groups. Evan, Ed, and myself in one; Charlie, Nate, and Jimmy in the other. One group will move down towards the objective while the other lies low in the tree line, providing cover. When the first group on the move hunkers down in the trees, the second group will move forward while being provided with cover. It will slow us down a bit, but we won’t be caught off guard that way. As long as we get there before dark to get the lay of the land and set up accordingly, we should be fine.”

  With that said, Jason led the first group while Nate led the second. They entered the lower tree line, worked their way towards the riverbank, turned east, and hand-railed Highway 70 from the river, continuing towards their objective. Along the way, they would occasionally stop as a scout would climb back up through the lower woods and to the road to scan the area for threats and to look for their objective. The scout would then rejoin their group, and both groups would proceed.

  Just as the sun was going down, the groups were getting close to the bridge. They couldn’t see any movement on the bridge and decided to move through the lower woods and back up to the road while maintaining their bounding overwatch. Once they reached the road, they could see the scene that Tyrone had described. “This must have been some small time trucking company’s base before things went to shit,” said Jason as he checked the area out with his binoculars, lying low in the trees with the others.

  “So what do you think?” asked Evan. “Should we put a moth in the web and wait for the spider?”

  “But who
gets to be the moth?” asked Jason with a crooked grin.

  “Why, us, of course,” Evan replied. “We are dragging these guys into this mess; we can’t volunteer them to be the bait.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” replied Jason.

  Evan and Jason then shared their plan with the others. Upon reaching a consensus, Evan and Jason stripped their tactical gear off to try and look like two ordinary travelers. They put their pistols inside their waistbands to hide them from plain view, and then pulled their jackets over top of them. They quickly doubled back down the riverbank, confident, now, that it was clear of threats. They rejoined the road above as if they were merely two travelers heading east towards the bridge.

  As they walked down the street in plain view, Evan said, “I feel naked without my VZ.”

  “Ditto, brother,” replied Jason. “Imagine how I feel; you only had half a rifle to start with.”

  “Ha,” Evan said sarcastically.

  “Besides,” Jason said, “only a fool takes a pistol to a gunfight.”

  “Well, nobody ever accused us of being smart,” Evan chuckled in reply.

  As they approached the containers and semi-trailers, Evan said, “Well, which of these luxury accommodations do you want to spend the night in?”

  “Let’s go for a trailer instead of a container. The height of the door will give us an advantage if emergency egress is necessary,” he replied.

  “Roger Roger,” said Evan with a chuckle, poking fun at Jason’s signature phrase.

  “Keep it up and I might just let one of those scumbags have you,” Jason replied in jest.

  The two selected a trailer, opened the door, and climbed up inside. They closed the door loudly to make sure they sent a message to the spider that it had indeed caught a moth.

  After about an hour, as the two men sat in the pitch-black darkness of the trailer, out of the silence, Jason said, “Are we there yet?”

  “Don’t make me pull this car over,” Evan replied.

  “I wonder how long it will take those scumbags to come check on their prey.”

  “Dunno,” answered Evan. “Heck, they may not even come, for all we know. We’re making assumptions based on limited information. You’ve got to do more leg work than this to pattern a deer, much less a gang of thugs.”

  “Hell, don’t give them so much credit. The deer are probably way smarter,” replied Jason with a chuckle.

  Just then, over their own laughter, they heard a truck coming down the road. The truck came to a stop right in front of the trailers and containers just like Tyrone had described.

  “Game on,” whispered Jason.

  “It’s about damn time,” whispered Evan in reply. “I’d go nuts if I had to be cooped up in this thing with you any longer.”

  As they heard footsteps headed in their general direction, they double-checked that their pistols were concealed but ready. The sound of a metal door swinging open was followed immediately by it slamming shut. Then more footsteps and the sound of another metal door on rusty hinges being opened and closed. The footsteps then grew louder and closer as their door swung open abruptly, followed by a strong spotlight shining in their faces, temporarily blinding and disorienting them. They put their hands in front of their faces, out of reflex, to block the light, struggling to see.

  “Jackpot!” a crude voice yelled out to the others. Evan and Jason squinted in the blinding light as another voice said, “Walk slowly towards us, and maybe we won’t hurt you.”

  Evan and Jason began to comply when the voice ordered, “Empty your pockets. What do you have on you? Are you armed?”

  In an attempt to stall the men, Jason answered the men in a fake foreign language. “Kaba dosta teno dringas monghumar! Monghumar! Monghumar!”

  “What the hell did you say? Speak English, asshole!” the man demanded.

  “Jason again answered, “Monghumar! Monghumar!”

  The man then said to one of the others, “Get up in there and check them out.”

  Before the other man could react to the demand, Ed’s voice rang out from the darkness, yelling, “Drop your weapons, or die where you stand!”

  As the assailants turned around in surprise to engage Ed, Evan and Jason both drew their handguns as Jason yelled, “Monghumar means ‘wrong trailer, mother fucker’! Now drop your weapons or die like he said.”

  The men then heard the sounds of Charlie, Nate, and Jimmy’s actions all cycle a round into the chamber, verifying that they were surrounded and in the line of fire.

  Jason and Evan took the spotlights from the men and illuminated the assailants while they each stayed in the darkness, intensified by the blinding light for cover. Evan walked up to the one who seemed to be in charge and pistol-whipped him on the back of the head, knocking him to the ground. He then looked at the others and said, “One wrong move and you’re wasted. Now drop to your knees.”

  Each of the men reluctantly complied while Jimmy and Charlie came along behind, tying their hands to a metal bar, keeping all of the men secured together.

  Once they were all secure, Evan went to the first man and said, “Where are the women?”

  “What women?” the man answered. “We don’t know what you’re talking about. We don’t have any women.”

  “I don’t think you realize who you’re messing with. Two of my whores got away. Some man who claimed they were his family came and took them in the middle of the night. Those bitches were worth a lot of money to me—especially the young one. I have reason to believe you took them from him. If you have them, let’s work a deal for me to get them back and I’ll let you live. Hell, maybe I can even give you a job and cut you in.”

  “Were they black? An older one and a younger one in her teens?” one of the men asked.

  “Yeah, that’s them; so do you have them?” Evan replied.

  “Ah, yeah, man. We’ve got’em. Them some good lookin’ bitches. That young one, she’s got it goin’ on. We popped that guy that took’em from ya too. They may not be as fresh as when you had them, though. We’ve damn near used them up,” the man said with a laugh. “But hey, we can get them back to you, and maybe even help you get some more. Just cut us in.”

  “Where the hell are they?” Evan demanded, trying to hide his growing rage.

  “Up on the hill behind us. At our place. Let us go and we’ll take you,” the man replied.

  “Shut the hell up T,” the man that Evan pistol-whipped said to his cohort.

  “Is he your boss?” Evan asked.

  “Yeah, man, he’s in charge,” the man replied.

  Evan then went over to the leader of the group, pulled his knife from its sheath, and slit the man’s throat, spilling his blood to pool at the feet of the other men.

  “I’m your boss now,” Evan said as he pointed the bloody knife at them. “Anybody got a problem with that?”

  “Na, man. You’re the boss. You’re the boss,” the men replied.

  “Now, how many more on the hill that I might have to cut in on this?”

  “There’s three more. They’re all cool though. They’ll be in. They’ll be in,” the talkative one said.

  “What are they doing up there right now?” Evan asked.

  “They’re supposed to be keeping watch over the place and the women, but knowing those bastards, they’re probably riding your whores right now,” the man said with a laugh.

  “Three, huh? Well, hell, that’s too many. I can’t cut so many of you in, I guess I’m gonna have to cut some of you out,” he said as he slashed the throat of the first man, with Jason killing the other in the same fashion.

  “What the hell, man? What the hell was that?” yelled Ed, aghast at what he had just witnessed.

  “Ed, relax,” said Nate. “These scumbags just admitted to murdering the father and kidnapping the mother and daughter to use as their sex slaves. What else were we supposed to do? Let them go? I can tell you that’s just not gonna happen.”

  “Yeah, we’ve seen this before,”
Charlie added. “And we’re not gonna let it happen again. That’s how we got young Haley back at Mildred’s place. That poor girl went through hell. I had a hard time coming to terms with this sort of thing at first too, but trust me, these guys only do what’s necessary for the good to survive. The bad simply reap what they sow, the way I see it.”

  Ed adjusted his hat on his head and said, “No, you’re right. I’m sorry, guys. That was just a lot to take in visually. I mean, I’ve shot people. I’ve had to, but this was up close and personal on a level I just hadn’t been to yet.”

  As Evan wiped the blood from his hands with a cloth, he looked at Ed and said, “It doesn’t get any easier to deal with on the inside. We just get better at getting through it on the outside. If we act screwed up at times, it’s because we are screwed up on the inside and just need a way to get it out.”

  Jason changed the subject by saying, “Well, guys, the scum up on the hill are gonna be expecting their cohorts here to return soon. We’ve got to regroup and get something going quick.”

  “What do you propose?” asked Evan.

  “Well, there were three of them in the truck,” Jason started to reply. “Were they all in the cab when they pulled up? We obviously couldn’t see from our position.”

  “There were two up front and one in the bed,” replied Charlie.

  “Well, then, I think we spilt back up into our two groups. My group will hump our way up to the house to do a little recon. Give us about an hour to get into position, and then drive right up to the place in their own truck. It’s dark, so they won’t notice it’s not them until you’re on them. Each group take a radio so we can adjust on the fly, but I anticipate you drawing them out front while we flank them or take them out from the inside. But, then again, you all know how plans go when it all hits the fan.”

  Everyone agreed to the plan as Jason recommended. Ed handed Jason and Evan the tactical vests and gear they had removed before the ruse. They quickly donned their gear and grabbed their rifles as Jason said, “Let’s hit it.”