FAR CRY 5: The House Of Cards, Part 1 - Double Down

By C. Mage

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ELAINE

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Rick's going to kill me. I just know it.

I don't know why I even agreed to come to Hope County. Jess said it was really important and really vital that I get there as soon as possible, and not to tell anyone. Knowing my sister, she's not entirely all there and she probably got into a big fight with Roger, AGAIN, and she's probably shacking up at Moonflower Trailer Park with Aunt Flora, AGAIN.

Honestly, Jess is a hot mess and there are no two ways about it.

I'm coming up on the city ...huh. This is new. There's a roadblock up ahead. There are some raggedy-looking people there. At least they're friendly, just waving me through. Hey, that's Earl, from the pumpkin farm. Darla, Greg, Missy, too, from the FANG Center. It's almost like they were expecting me or something; I can't imagine why else they'd be here on the south road. And they're all wearing shirts with those Eden's Gate crosses on them.

I may need to have a talk with Jess more than I first thought.

Okay, I'm starting to find this a little bit creepy.

I passed by the "Welcome to Hope County" sign, only someone defaced it by painting the word, "SINNER" on the front of it. There are also other buildings I've passed, also defaced with words like, "PRIDE" and "WRATH" and "THIS IS EDEN'S GATE TERRITORY". I drove on until I got into Fall's End and...whoa. People are walking around wearing these white clothes with that Eden's Gate cross on it and they're all carrying, and I don't mean groceries. And the worst part? They look so HAPPY. There are smiles on their faces while they're armed to the nostrils.

What the hell's happened to my town?

I park the car and head into the Spread Eagle, pretty much the only bar in town. It's almost seven at night, but when I walk in, the place is nearly deserted and Mary May is nowhere to be found. The lights are all on, though. Video arcade game's turned off. The only real noise in the place is a radio playing some gospel-sounding song called, "Now That This Old World Is Ending". I was waiting for Rod Serling to step out and do the teaser when the door opened and Jess came in, wearing normal clothes, but she looked...and smelled...like she hadn't taken a bath in a couple of weeks! "Jess?" I asked, not entirely certain that this person was my I-wouldn't-be-caught-DEAD-outside-of-my-home-without-makeup-on sister.

"Lainey!" She sat down next to me on a stool, looking for all the world like she'd just won the lottery. "I've missed you so much. How've you been?"

"How've I…? Jess, what's going on here? I feel like I took the wrong left turn at the signpost to the Twilight Zone!"

"Lainey, it's been such a WONDERFUL experience. Look at me. How do I look?"

"HOMELESS. Last time I saw you, I couldn't get you to come outside without makeup on using a tow truck. Now, you look…"

"John says, 'a woman's natural look shows her inner beauty.' I won't get painted up like some Jezebel no more, no SIR."

"John? Who's John?"

She laughed and pushed my shoulder playfully. "Silly….John SEED, of course. You simply cannot imagine how much better I feel after he took my sins away, made me as pure as the driven snow…" The look on her face was making me wonder if this was really my sister at all.

"Well...hopefully I'll get to meet him tomorrow. I've been driving for the best part of 24 hours and I really need to get some sleep. Will you be here tomorrow?"

Jess smiled that smile again that made me want to punch it. "Of course. The home's nice and clean, you can sleep there and John can come by in the morning. Oh, he so wants to meet you!"

"I'll bet. Wait….YOU cleaned the house?" Something was definitely off, now. Jess had always been a slob. NOW she's Miss Happy Homemaker?

"The Father says that a dirty home is the result of a sinful, slothful mind. Only SINNERS have dirty homes." Her voice was joyous and my flesh was starting to crawl. "That's why I asked you to come here. I wanted you to meet the Father, listen to what he has to say, what they all have to say. Your soul's in peril, Lainey...the Collapse is coming, and I don't want anything bad to happen to you. I want you to be saved, just like me, just like everyone here!" Her voice was getting more and more desperate and she reached out, taking my hands. There was a smell on her, not just the usual dirt and grime. A sweet smell.

I had a bad feeling we weren't as alone in the Spread Eagle as it looked, and since we were probably surrounded by people just like Jess, I had been trying to look as sympathetic and as welcoming as possible. But I knew they wouldn't buy me being so eager to drink the Kool-Aid they're serving around here. "Jess, I'm glad you called me. Something big is clearly going on around here, and I'd like to know more, but I'm beat. I drove 20 hours almost nonstop because of the way you sounded on the phone, like you were hurt or injured and sick." I squeezed her hands gently. "But now I realize that you're not in any danger, it's like all the adrenaline's gone and I really need to get some sleep, hon. I'm just dead on my feet."

Jess blinked, then looked contrite. "Of course, I've been so selfish, I never even gave a thought to how I must have sounded on the phone. I'll get you home, you'll get some sleep, and tomorrow, after a good breakfast, we'll go talk to John and ease your mind about what's going on." She smiled so happily at me. "I can't WAIT for you to meet him!"

Yeah, I thought, that makes ONE of us…

RICK

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I don't like this.

I just got home from "work". It's just a cover, working as security for a construction business. I don't have to worry about working for the next few decades, but it'd look suspicious for me to have money while I'm staying at home playing video games and working out in the garage. What I really do is touch base with my old contacts, go to the gym and work out for an hour or so, manage my finances and enjoy not doing what I was doing the last fourteen years. Take in the clean air, smell the roses.

Elaine's not home, car's not here, some of her clothes and toiletries are missing, and her suitcase is gone. The suitcase isn't big enough to hold more than a week's worth of clothes, so that nixes the first thought I had...which was a worst-case scenario, that she knew what I used to do for a living...and still do, for the right target. Last month's "business trip" was to a small country in the Himalayas called Kyrat. Seems some despot was taken down, only the woman that took over decided to have her brother killed, increase recruitment for the rebel forces, the "Golden Path" and imprison the son of Pagan Min, the rightful ruler of the country. The young man's family here in the States wanted someone to bring their son back, and I hadn't been to Kyrat before, so I took the job. Found out the son didn't know he was the rightful ruler and turned out to be a decent guy. When he found out the woman who took over, Amita, wanted to preserve the country's drug trade, I offered to take her out, but he said that he was going to take care of it, since he was largely responsible for her being in charge to begin with.

Satisfied that the guy was the right man for the job, I took my leave...after the tragic death of one Amita by snakebite. Yeah, the snakes in this area can be REALLY dangerous, and the guy had enough on his plate. The Golden Path will be looking to him now, since from what I heard, he was a hero to them, and Amita told them the guy had left the country.

He'll figure the rest out.

Unfortunately, his problems were solved….and mine was just beginning.

It didn't take much for me to get an idea of where she was going. A simple "*69" on the phone pulled up an area code in Montana, in a place called, "Fall's End". When I called the number, however, it just rang and rang and rang. No voicemail, no answering machine.

My next call was to a friend of mine from my old workplace, who gave me some interesting news about the area, Hope County. Several years back, a guy named Joseph Seed shows up, who got religion and started up a new version of Christianity, called the Project at Eden's Gate. The dogma isn't entirely clear, but more and more people join this new religion. Contact with people outside Hope County becomes a little more sporadic. The ATF and the FBI have files on this location, but the agents sent in from either one come back and say that everything's all right, it's just a little alarmism from the locals, and no evidence of any crimes being committed…

Hold on. I ask him to compare the statements of the agents sent in, all seven, from those agencies. He calls back an hour later, reporting that all seven agents reported the exact same thing, using almost identical wording. "What going on here, Rick?"

"I don't know, Kenneth, but I need you to look into those seven people."

"I can't order surveillance on these people without more evidence that what you've got! A couple of these people answer to people much higher than me. One of them just got promoted to being the aide to the Chief Of Staff!"

"Then I'll get you more evidence. But what I need you to do is call Betty and Clarence. I need to get dropped into that area and I need some equipment. Tell them I need my Go-Bag #8. They'll know what to bring. I'll be at their airfield in five hours."

"Rick….you better know what you're thinking of doing."

"Ken, not even GOD knows what I'm doing. And considering what I may be up against….that may be a good thing. Keep digging."

I stopped the car at the airfield and got out. Betty and Clarence were a mother/son team of pilots. They had a nice collection of World War One and World War Two planes, and often gave skydiving and piloting lessons, fully accredited by the state. However, the state might've had a few uncomfortable questions about one plane they had in their hangar...a Grob G 520T EGRETT II. At first glance, a casual observer would mistake it for a World War Two piece, except for the wings. To help prevent uncomfortable questions, the plane had been converted to use detachable wings, so if the FAA ever came looking, the wings could be removed and stashed away within an hour. The plane itself had been painted to look as if the paint job wasn't complete, not to mention dirty.

By the time I had arrived, they had the wings attached, were fully fueled and had the drop pods attached, one for me, one for my gear. "You ready to go?"

"Always, sugar. Clarence, honey, be a good boy and spoof that flight plan for us, would you? There's a dear." Clarence, a few minutes over the age of 16, nodded and ran to the office. "You're all packed and ready, so let's get you into your jumpsuit and fit you for the air tanks. It's going to be cold and thin where we're letting you out. Even so, you sure about this?"

"Something's wrong there, Betty, and there's a civilian involved."

"Well, that's all well and good, but HALO drops are never routine."

"Just be sure to drop the second pod where I indicated on the map and we'll be golden."

"Suit yerself. Let's get you ready."

Well, Betty was right about the drop. It was a night drop, so I had to keep an eye on my gauges. Just over three minutes of freefall, then opening my parachute practically right before terminal velocity turned me into street pizza. Never as fun as advertised, but it gets the job done.

Time for a little recon.

As I got out the radio, I was starting to understand how difficult it would be to send a signal outside the area. Apart from some radio signals from the outside and landlines, trying to make a call to someone outside this valley would be a stone bitch without a satphone. This place practically screams, "geographic isolation".

I checked my map. I was a few hundred yards south of Fall's End, and it was a few minutes past oh-one hundred hours. The gear drop would be deep in the woods to the southwest, to avoid being discovered by anything except the local wildlife. Hopefully, this will all be a misunderstanding and I won't need the heavy gear. I found a place to stash my flightsuit and my air tanks. Unless my upcoming needs included scuba diving, they'd keep under the hay in the nearby barn for now.

Not for the first time since I dropped from that plane, I wondered how Elaine was doing…

ELAINE

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I am SO screwed.

I made the mistake of listening to the radio to help me get some sleep, and what I got were some bizarre gospel songs, all talking about sinners, the "Collapse" and about the Seed family. I figured the best way to get an idea of what was going on was to take a look around. When I was a kid, I used to climb up on the roof and look around at the whole valley below and the stars above with my telescope.

Tonight, the stars were the last things on my mind.

I pulled out the old telescope as quietly as I could, then moved to the roof, set up the telescope and did some looking around to get more pieces for the puzzle.

A lot of the farms around here aren't raising regular crops anymore. There's still some, but most of the farms I'm seeing have a new crop...fields of white flowers. Saw a couple of trucks carrying big plastic barrels. Red silos filled with something that's leaking some kind of green gas. Men and women with white clothes….people I knew growing up, people who were my neighbors, people I went to school with...wearing white clothes and carrying guns like this was some kind of...some kind of war zone.

A holy war…

I have to get out of here. I don't know how these people, how my sister got this way….but the woman who called me here, who's sleeping in the room down the hall, that's not my sister. These aren't the people I once knew. And this John Seed is somehow responsible, him and the rest of the Seed Family.

I've got to get out of here before I end up as another one of these drooling yes-men.

I'm just glad Rick isn't here. I really like the guy...but there's no way he's cut out for something like this. He works as a rent-a-cop for a CONSTRUCTION COMPANY, for crying out loud. Yes, he's built, he goes to the gym, but it takes a lot more than that to handle crazies like this.

Now all I have to do is figure out what the Seed Family's plans are without getting shot….or worse, captured and turned into whatever my sister is. God, what am I going to do? Do I play it close to the vest, meet with John Seed and let him think I'm interested...or is it too risky? God, I don't know...and I don't have a lot of time to decide.

Where's a double espresso when you really NEED one?

RICK

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Managed to find out quite a lot in the last two hours...none of it good.

The Seed Family has a complete stranglehold on Hope County and practically everyone in it. Joseph Seed has found a chemical compound in a rare flower that grows in Hope County that he's using as a brainwashing agent, forcibly indoctrinating everyone he can in Hope County...and from the looks of things, they've managed to get people outside the county indoctrinated, too. As soon as the officers were taken down, the dispatcher, Nancy, should've called the National Guard. But she's reporting nothing out of the ordinary...which means she's in on it.

What's worse, these people are walking around with some serious firepower. Milspec weapons, plastic explosives, grenades, rocket launchers...they've even outfitted a few World War Two planes with machine guns and bombs. The county's been sectioned off, each being run by a different member of the Seed Family.

There's also a resistance movement, but from the sounds of things, they're on the ropes. They're holed up at the county jail, of all places. Going to see if I can establish a base camp there.

Also, I found out other information while I was getting the maps for the county. There are three ICBM missile silos that have almost certainly been occupied by the "peggies" as most of the people who haven't been indoctrinated refer to those that had.

Religious zealots of a doomsday cult brainwashed by a drug they call "the Bliss" in charge of nuclear weapons? Yeah. This isn't a shitstorm. This is a category five TORNADO.

First things first. Find Elaine.

I activate the tracker for the bug I put on her car….okay, first off, enough with the stalker comments, okay? I put the bug there as a precaution in case someone stole her car. No, I'm not the kind of jerk who needs to know where his girlfriend is at any given time. No, I'm not paranoid. I'm hyper-aware. There's a difference. Okay, enough judging me, I've got to get back to finding Elaine. According to the tracker...there. Looks like she's at his sister's house.

Think I'll go pay them a visit.

Okay…clearly, I'm in the TWILIGHT ZONE.

Elaine always considered her sister, Jess, a slob. She complained how, ever since their parents died and left Jess the house, the amount of upkeep on it was practically zero. Jess sent Elaine a selfie of herself in front of the house. The lawn wasn't mowed, the garden was overgrown with weeds, and there was actually a car up on blocks on the far side of the yard. I could only guess at the state of the house inside.

Now...I feel like I'm looking at the home of the Cleavers. Impeccably-manicured lawn. Flowerpots. A porch swing. A white freaking picket fence. No way. Somebody else lives here. Except Elaine's car is here. I moved around back and checked the back door. Unlocked. Something to be said for small towns, I thought at first, then took a closer look using nightvision goggles. The place was CLEAN. No, not just clean….I smelled bleach and other chemicals. This place was STERILE. I didn't get it. Most of the people with Eden's Gate were unshaven, dirty, unkempt. Were their houses this clean as well...or did the Seeds make Jess clean her house to the point of making it clean enough to qualify as a hospital's emergency room in order to help her prove her devotion?

I've seen enough. I leave the same way I came in, then hear an unladylike grunt right above me. I look up to see a very familiar ass right over my head, attached to two very familiar legs. I step back, wait for her to land, then put my hand over her mouth and grab her tight. "SHHHH! It's me, Rick!" Dammit, she was trying to bite my fingers!

She stopped, then turned to look at me. "RICK?" she hissed. "What are you DOING here?"

"It's lovely to see you too, sweetie, but maybe we should continue this conversation when we're no longer in the middle of JONESTOWN?"

"All right, follow me. I know this place like the back of my hand…"

"We need to get to the barn, first And then we need to get somewhere your sister DOESN'T expect you to be."

She looked at me as if I was suddenly covered in green scales. "Well, this is a side I haven't seen of you. Did you learn how to be sneaky while you were out with your friends playing paintball?"

"Yeah, 'paintball.' Less talky, more sneaky, huh?"

We got to the barn where I picked up the rest of my gear, zippering it up in a duffel bag. "Where did you get all that stuff? That Army Surplus store on Eighth? And why did you bring SCUBA gear, we're landlocked…"

"Let's discuss this when we're well away from this place."

"But my car, my purse…!"

"Leave them. They'll be no good to you right now. The less ID material they find on you, the better."

She gave me that look again. "Since when are you an expert on these things…" Her voice trailed off as I took out my P99 and added the silencer to it. "And where did THAT come from? Rick….I think you have some explaining to do."

I sighed. "That is going to have to wait until we get underground. Do you know of anyone who might have an underground bomb shelter or storm shelter?"

Elaine gave a quick, short laugh. "It'll be harder to find someone who DOESN'T."

"Closest one?"

Elaine looked around, then nodded. "I know. Dutch's place. He's got the best shelter in the place, and it's pretty remote."

"Get us there, and I'll tell you everything….and you do the same."

We arrived at the bunker. It was pretty well hidden; if Elaine hadn't remembered where to look for it, it would've taken an hour to find it. The hatch was open, oddly enough. "I'll clear the bunker, then you follow me down."

"Rick, I know Dutch. If he's here, wouldn't it be better if I was the first face he saw?"

Had to admit it, she was right. "All right...but once you get down, we're going together." She went down the ladder and I followed, reaching the bottom and looking around. Maybe I should get the name of Cutch's architect; this bunker was extremely well-made, generator, fresh water feed and filtration...and a control center of some kind. A bank of several monitors was set up, showing views from all over the island. A bald, older man in BDU pants, a shirt, and a hunting vest was asleep in his chair, an empty bottle of Jack Daniels lying on the floor.

"Come on….help me get him to bed. I'll….look around for a bedroom, looks like he's moved a few things around since I was last here." She went off to find the bedroom and I lifted Dutch up, carrying him over my shoulder. "Over here!" she called, which sounded way too loud down here.

"Keep it down! You don't know who might be nearby."

"Oh, relax. You could set off a grenade down here and nobody would feel so much as a bump right outside. Found the bed." I carried him over and laid him out. It was a simple twin bed with a mattress, no sheets, just a pillow. I made a quick check and found a Colt .45 revolver, removing the bullets. "What are you doing that for?" she asked.

"So if he wakes up and we don't notice, he won't shoot us by mistake." I put the gun back where it was. "Come on back to the desk...and we'll talk."

"So...talk. From the beginning."

I sighed and took a deep breath. I always hated briefings like this. "I went into the Army right out of high school, and things were going well, except they noticed how good I was at marksmanship. They checked me out further, and it was discovered that my psychological profile indicated a certain...moral flexibility."

"What do you mean, 'moral flexibility'? What are you some sort of psychopath?" Yep. There was the look I was worried about.

"No! Psychopaths kill without remorse or compunctions. I just wanted to serve my country. I was loaned out to an NSA program where I went through counter-terrorism training at Camp X, which if asked, I've never heard of, and I was hand-picked to head up a strike team, since I was so good at it...and after a while…" I took another deep breath. "...I began to LIKE it."

She looked at me with that growing-horror look. "Did you kill innocent people? TELL ME THE TRUTH or I am out the door right now!"

"No! I didn't murder innocent people! You should see the files of the people I'm sent after...they read like DEMONS' RESUMES."

"This is something you actually did?"

And here comes the final nail. "...it's something I DO. When I went freelance, I was in relationships before...and as soon as they found out what I did for a living, they left so fast, you'd think I'd been handed THEIR 'files' and then told them there were contracts out on them! So, I don't tell you what I do, because I don't want to lose you, too. And then you went to visit your sister, and I found out more about the Eden's Gate cult and the Seed family...and I had to come in after you."

"How did you even get here?"

"Jumped out of a plane at forty-five thousand feet. That's what the breathing apparatus was for. Had to wait until I was below 900 feet before opening my parachute." No answer, she was just looking at me. "Come on, say SOMETHING."

"Jesus Christ on a chariot-driven sidecar. I'm dating Jason Fucking Bourne." She shook her head. "Well, Rick, as it turns out, I need a Jason Bourne on this. My sister's been brainwashed. I think it's got something to do with those flowers growing all over the place. We can't rely on the police here."

"Well, we do have two things going for us. We've got an asset on the ground, a CIA agent named Huntley. He needs me to do a job for him, and in return, he provides us with intel on the Seed Family. Also, based on some chatter on the radio, there's a resistance group in the county, but they're on the losing end of the peggies."

"'Peggies'?"

"Project, Eden's, Gate. P, E, G, peg."

"Ah." She sighed. "I need to get some sleep."

"Here, use my sleeping bag." I removed it from my duffel bag.

"What are you going to sleep on?" she asked as I took out a slim pillow.

"I'll sleep in this chair. It's not too bad, and I did get some sleep earlier."

Elaine blinked. "Aren't you going to be uncomfortable sitting there?"

"I'm going to sit facing the entrance. I don't want to get too comfortable, so if someone does find this place, or Dutch wakes up, I want to be awake pretty quickly."

Elaine sighed. "Have it your way, 'Jason'." She went to sleep, and so did I.

I woke up at the sounds of noises coming from the bedroom. Coughing, groaning and...wait for it…..the retching. The trifecta completed, I called out, "You've got visitors, and we're not with Eden's Gate." Silence, then careful footsteps as Dutch entered the room. I held up a bottle of painkillers. "Here." I tossed it and he caught the bottle, looking at it first, then at me again. Then he saw Elaine sleeping in the sleeping bag.

"Lainey? Lainey Parson, is that you?"

Elaine woke up and smiled. "Sorry for not knocking, but you and 'Jack' didn't want to be disturbed."

"Yeah...mind if I have my chair back, youngster?"

I stood up, picking up my gun and holstering it. "All yours."

He looked over at Elaine. "Who's this guy?"

"My boyfriend, Rick. He's here to help."

Dutch looked me over. "Help us...or help you?"

"Help everyone."

"And how do you intend to do that?"

"Stop the Seed Family any way I can."

"Are you ready to go to war with them, boy? Because that's what it'll take. We are in occupied territory. The peggies have control of this whole valley."

"Then we take it back. But I need intel." My watch beeped, reminding me of my appointment with Agent Huntley. "Have to go, meeting up with someone who might be able to shed some light on how much influence Joseph Seed has outside Hope County." I held up my earbud radio, then gave Dutch my handheld. "I'll be on channel 2. The radios are both encrypted. Feel free to brief me and Elaine on what's going on around here, everything you know."

Elaine looked at me with a sour expression. "And why am I not coming with you?"

"Because it's dangerous...and if anything happens to you, I won't give a damn what happens to Hope County." I turned and headed for the ladder, climbing up to the hidden hatch.

Time to go to work.

ELAINE

I still felt like I was dreaming. My home overrun by brainwashed cultists? My boyfriend, some sort of government-trained assassin? If I walked out of this bunker and saw a parade of tap-dancing penguins, I wouldn't even BLINK. "Dutch, give me the news. And don't sugar-coat it."

Dutch pulled up a map that had several changes made to it in colored markers. Most every area with standing buildings has been turned into outposts for the peggies. Homes, campgrounds, the gas stations, airfields, the hotel, the FANG Center, the archaeological park, the water treatment center, the mines, the ranger stations, the lodges, everything. Most everyone else is in hiding, too scared to show their faces or trying to get out. Peggies got the roads boxed up and they've got barbed wire fences up along the main roads. Now, Joseph runs things from on high, but the county is broken down into three sections: northwest, southwest, and east." He pointed to each section of the map in turn as he explained, "The Southwest area is run by John Seed. He's known as 'the Baptizer', because new recruits are taken to the rivers and ponds to be baptized...right after barrels of Bliss are poured into the water first. Probably what he had planned for you first thing this morning. The northwest is run by Jacob Seed. He's the one that trains the recruits to become 'soldiers of God'. He's always talking about 'culling the herd' and 'finding a place for the weak'. Man's a monster of the first order. But the eastern area...that's run by the most insidious of them. Faith Seed. The eastern area has the highest concentration of the flowers they use to make the Bliss, and even without processing, just walking through the flowers will make you higher than the moon. 'Faith Seed' isn't even her real name, I think it's Rachel...and she wasn't even the first 'Faith'. She's young and attractive as well as being a liar and a manipulator, playing the 'holy virgin' figure to the hilt."

"Wait….Rachel? I went to school with her! Her hair was black, then, but it's her…" I couldn't believe it.

"The peggies have resources all over the place. There are three missile bunkers here, and the Seed Family have commandeered them all to make sure they can't be assassinated. Rumor has it the soldiers stationed there were among the first ones to be turned, and then the technicians that worked there. They're also storing the Bliss in scattered locations all over the place, make it easy to have some handy once they take prisoners." He stopped. "Hey, there's Rick. Jeez, there are seven peggies at that camp. Your boy better be careful not to get spotted…"

His voice trailed off as we watched Rick take out all seven of the armed men and women using that silenced gun of his and some throwing knives. I barely recognized Rick as he moved into them. They never knew or saw what hit them.

"Well, shut my mouth." Dutch said in disbelief, and not a little admiration. "I thought your boyfriend was going to end up dead or captured, but he did all that like it was his morning commute. If that's just a taste of what he can do, we just might have a chance after all."

"Yeah….who knew?" On the one hand, I felt horrified at the way he handed out death like it was Halloween candy. On the other...words and good intentions weren't going to help my home and the people that lived here. I was going to get used to the idea that the people that were brainwashed, drugged, conditioned into slavery to serve the Seeds...they weren't the people I knew anymore. They would either drug me to the gills to make me one of them...or they would kill me. And if working with Rick was the only way to save this place...then I was going to have to get used to the idea of shaking his blood-soaked hands.

Once my home was recovered from the Seeds...and once the Seed Family were brought to justice...THEN I'll talk with Rick about whether or not there's a future for us. "Dutch, what if we started taking those outposts back? Are there people that would move in, defend them? If we help the resistance take back what's ours, then we loosen the Seeds' grip on this area."

"Now you're talking. If we can deplete the peggies' supply of Bliss, rescue prisoners and attack their resources...we can take back Hope County, piece by piece. Problem was, up until now, we didn't have anyone with the skills or the equipment to do it. I'll put the word out, see if we can find specialists like your boyfriend to help. I've got a few names."

"Dutch, I've got some questions...where did the Seeds get so much FIREPOWER? Every one of them is armed to the teeth."

"Rumor is, some colonel in the Marines came up here with his family to do some fishing. Faith Seed got to him and his family, and they became part of the 'faithful'. The peggies were rewarded with shipments of military hardware, and they've been coming in like clockwork for the past three years. Plus, I've been hearing that we've been getting more and more visitors coming up here for the hunting and the fishing. More military visitors."

"Oh my God…" This just keeps getting worse.

Dutch pulled up the radio. "So, Rick, if we're going to do this... there are places we need to start with. Fall's End Has resources we'll need, but the place is heavily populated with cultists. You're going to need more than your pistol and some knives to clear that place out. And remember…these people, these cultists? Don't make the mistake of thinking you can get them back, somehow. You can make pipe dreams about that when there's fewer of them than there are of us, but don't think about trying to cure them. If you hesitate, they will kill you. And then nobody's getting cured. You get me?"

Elaine nodded reluctantly. "I just need to head a ways into the woods to the southwest. I have a few things waiting for me that'll come in useful."

"Rick, tell me where it is. I'm coming to meet you there."

"Just be careful?" Rick asked.

"Oh, sure, that's me, someone willing to make her way into a forest while dodging peggies and other wild animals, because I'm the CAUTIOUS type." I put the radio down and turned to Dutch. "Got some more appropriate clothes for me?"

Dutch smiled. "Thought you'd never ask."

RICK

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I made my way to the drop zone, worrying about Elaine the whole way. I could understand why she'd be so determined to protect her home, but it takes a lot more than determination and wishful thinking to fight an army this size. It takes TRAINING. I've had years of it, but her? Honestly, I think she's going to get herself killed.

And it'll be my fault.

Found it. The container was a wide, flat box, roughly the size of a very large door. The parachute was a camo job to make it harder to see from the air, and the extremely low profile made it hard to spot at ground level.

I opened it up and started doing inventory. Heckler & Koch MP5SD, reliable, powerful and discreet. Bushmaster AR-C, fitted with a silencer and a scope. Franchi SPAS-12, reflex sight, and silencer, for subtle close encounters. And lastly, the Hungarian Lynx Gepard M6 anti-materiel rifle, also fitted with a scope and silencer, for those times when you want to reach out and CRUSH someone. Guns for every season, though I wasn't about to carry all of them around with me.

I heard Elaine long before I saw her. "Just in time." I started checking out my explosives when she came up to my side and gaped at the small arsenal in front of me.

"Jesus…" She turned to look at me. "You don't kid around, do you?"

"I'll take the sniping rifle and the shotgun."

"Good. I'll take this rifle." She reached for the AR-C.

"Do you even know how to USE a rifle?"

"I grew up here, Rick. I was fishing and hunting here when I was thirteen. I'm no stranger to guns." She checked the AR-C, examined it for a minute, then picked up a clip, slammed it home and cocked it like she'd done it a thousand times before. "I'm just a stranger to shooting PEOPLE."

"Well...just be careful you don't shoot ME." I looked her over, realizing she'd traded in her jeans and tank top for a set of camo BDUs and a camo hat with a wide brim. "Looks like you're dressed for the part now."

"What's the plan?"

"We're going to lead them outside of town and use some CAD tactics."

"'CAD'? We're going to show them some 3D software?"

"No. 'CAD' is short for 'Confuse, Annoy, Destroy'. We need to lure them out of town and let them think they're being sniped at from one direction, when they're really being hit from another. To do that, we're going to need some of those guns from the guys I took out earlier, some coat hangers...and a mirror."

"All right, Rick. What do you want me to do?"

"Cover me, make sure nobody gets lucky. Come on...Fall's End isn't going to liberate itself."

And with that, we made our way to the town, hoping that there were some sane people left there…

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TO BE CONTINUED….