Warlock of Omaha Chapter 14 On the Road Again
Travis was not a bundle of emotion, but he loved that knife and that made me feel good. He was getting about as far back as one might hope. Jake was making good progress towards his GED.
One day as I wasted time puttering around the forge trying to figure what to do next, Travis dropped by.
"I'd like to run by my cabin and get some stuff. Even if I'm not gonna stay there." He said.
"Okay," I answered. "It's not like you have to ask permission."
"I just figured you'd want us to stay together as a group?" He answered.
Well that made sense.
It was February. While cold, the roads were clear. Truth was, I hadn't been out much lately. The idea of a road trip sounded good. I needed some time to think anyway as I thought about my next project.
I had a handful of items on the table. I had Big Baby roughly half way to done. I was thinking about what I might do with a second-generation axe. I was also trying to figure out how I might use my amazing new forge skills to improve our gear. To be honest, my gear. Most of my gear was made of plastic and ceramic. There was some steel in my firearms but not exactly appropriate to forging.
I called Jake and asked him if he wanted to come. He wanted. I let the girls know we'd be leaving the next day at eight. I packed a grip. Put Baby and my shotgun in the truck. My Dodge has something called Ramboxes which run down the length of the bed and provide lockable storage. Mopar sells a rack for the Ramboxes to hold rifles. I loaded some ammo as well.
The next morning Travis rolled up at seven fifty in the Jeep truck with Jake. We convoyed over to the Costco and topped off then headed south on I-29. We got to Kansas City just after eleven and stopped for some que for lunch. Then we headed down to Branson. It was a quiet drive with plenty of time for thinking. Jake spelled both of us driving. It made sense to bring both vehicles, we'd be able to bring more crap back and while one field trip was nice, the fewer round trips after this the better. I didn't want to push it. The drive gave Jake and me some good time to talk. I reviewed his math and gave pointers. Jake also got time to talk to Travis. They included me in that conversation by cell phone which was nice.
We checked into a nice hotel in Branson for the evening, then we went and got a nice steak dinner, took in a show and settled in for the evening. Before we went to sleep in the suite, I checked my report. The day before I had ordered a patrol of the cabin by Dark Glass security. It wasn't as expensive, per man, as the detectives. The guys they would send would be, merely, former Green Beret, Marine Force Recon, SEAL-type guys. There would be a team of eight, they would stay out of sight and just sweep to make sure El Compost Mage didn't have any nasty surprises waiting for us.
The report described the area as deserted and safe.
We got up the next morning and went for some breakfast. Travis ate solidly, but nowhere near as much as Jake and me. We got in our trucks and drove the last hour over to Travis' cabin.
I had led the way down to Branson, but since Travis knew the way to his cabin, it made more sense for him to lead, so I followed. I was thinking about how much grunt work would be involved. I really had no idea what Travis had in that cabin that he wanted to bring, was it a bag of clothes, a chest of personal things, a grand piano? I was also worrying about lunch. I needed to eat a lot more these days to feel okay. His Cabin would be out in the middle of nowhere. We'd be lucky to be back to civilization by evening. Maybe I should signal a stop to get a cooler full of snacks and sandwiches?
We drove up into the hills and it was incredibly beautiful. Vista after vista of primeval forest, lakes and hills. I knew if it was beautiful now, mid-winter, it must be amazing in other seasons. We climbed and climbed, and the roads got smaller and smaller. Eventually we left the paved road and traveled on gravel.
Finally, we got to a fence. Travis jumped out and opened the fence. Jake drove the Jeep through, and I followed. Travis closed the fence behind us.
We drove up his very long, and I was proud to see, very well graveled driveway through the woods. We emerged into a large clearing with a small wooden cabin in the middle. I would have guessed from the exterior it was 1000-1500 square feets inside. I could see an entrance to a root cellar on the side of the building. I could also see a well, water holding tank and septic system. I also noted where the propane tank was. I had always envisioned a more Nebraska-like open grass covered field with occasional tree kind of place. There was space around the house, but it was definitely out in the woods.
We parked and got out. I was still wearing my gear, though my visor was up. I expected I would take some stuff off if there was a lot of sweaty moving to do, but for the moment, it was cold. The cold didn't bother Jake at all, he was wearing his standard t-shirt and ripped jeans. I opened the tonneau cover for my truck bed, figuring we would be loading soon. We walked up to the front door and just as Travis was about to do something to open the front door, the woods on every side came alive.
I yelled, "Back to the trucks!"
We ran back to my truck. Jake stopped to pull his baseball bat from the Jeep. I popped open the Rambox with the rifle rack. I could see around us what I swear were zombies. For a split second I could see there were human zombies, some still wearing camo with M-4s still strapped to their bodies, others looked like local contractors. I didn't have time to count. There were also all sorts of zombie critters, dogs, raccoons, and other things. I was intensely aware there were too many, too close. We were going to die. I had time to get one gun out of the Rambox. Inside was Baby II and the Marine. The smart play was for me to grab Baby and ammo. I grabbed the Marine and a satchel with about a hundred rounds and threw them to Travis. That made no sense. How well did I know Travis? What if he was in on the ambush? Lots of good reasons to think that. Yes, I could see inside him and I knew a lot about his history, but he had been a guest of the Compost Mage, either willingly or not. There could be stuff in his head he didn't know about. Giving him a gun meant fewer for me.
Sometimes battles are won and lost in such moments.
Jake was already in the bed of my truck and I jumped over the side to join him. I'm sure Travis could have made the scramble up, but he was now holding a shotgun and satchel, he tried to get up, Jake grabbed him with one hand by the scruff of his jacket and lifted what was probably 200+ pounds of man and gear with one hand like a sack of potatoes and put him in on his feet in the bed. I had my Glock in my hand and started shooting. I drew a bead on the nearest human zombie in my sight and put a round through his chest. A lot of guts went out the backside and he fell down. Then he got back up and started coming again.
"Headshots!" I yelled.
The shotgun was already booming. At some level, I was very happy the impact hadn't hit me in the back. I was very aware that I had only two extra mags on me, I now had 45 shots left. I started shooting human zombies again. I was taking careful shots, mostly hitting heads and the head shots kept them down. The shotgun kept going off, I assumed Travis was a pretty good hand with a scattergun, but there were only so many rounds there. Jake was running back and forth from cab to the tailgate, as various critters found their way in, he would whack them to the sky. We were making a good showing of ourselves, but I knew it wasn't enough. There were too many of them, too close, not enough ammo. When my last mag went into the pistol, the axe came into my left hand.
I'm not sure how many shots I had left. Maybe five when someone jumped onto the roof of the cabin and yelled, "Stop!"
Everything stopped. The critters stopped coming closer and we stopped shooting.
The person on the roof was female. She looked like some sort of elf princess. Her body was covered in large leaves. She spoke.
"You have put up a valiant fight, but you must know it is in vain."
"Son of bitch!" I thought. "That's Cassie!"
She continued, "Soon, you will be overwhelmed, and you will serve my master as these creatures do, but you have a choice. Surrender, come willingly, and you will serve as I do. You need not die."
Yes, I know it sounds like a bad deal, but you have to remember, we were about to die. Also, Cassie had magic in her voice which made the idea of surrendering sound sooo good.
"Okay, well then…" I said, dropping my pistol in the bed. I saw her shoulders sag just a tiny bit, she thought I was going for it. Then, without warning, I jumped onto the cab of my truck and ran forward. I ran across the nose of my truck, jumped to bed of the Jeep, over the Jeep's cab down her hood and made one good jump onto the roof.
While she had been talking, I had been looking. She had a shadow on her head like Travis had when I brought him in. As I got to the roof, I fainted a swing with the axe at her midsection. She had amazing reflexes, she twisted her body away from my axe so fast. But that moved her head closer to me. Everything I had, all my magic, my new wolf focus, my strength, my Svartalf drilling, everything went into that one swing, which she was slow to dodge, because it wasn't really pointed at her, it was pointed just above her head.
I could tell it almost wasn't enough. My swing hit the shadow and it was much, much tougher than the one on Travis' head had been and when I broke that one, he had been strapped down and I was taking swings at my leisure with a heated glowing axe. The shadow struggled, but I was much stronger too. My axe pressed against the shadow for a split second that felt like an eternity as my axe and I struggled with the Compost Mage who fought to keep the shadow intact. Then the axe shattered the shadow and Cassie went down like a pole axed steer. All the zombies dropped like their strings had been cut. I could feel the pain and anguish of the Compost Mage for a split second as his hold was broken.
Luckily, Cassie hadn't fallen off the roof. I sat down right where I was. I felt a bit wobbly. I could see the clearing. There had been many more zombies than I had even known. We would never have been able to shoot our way out. That said, Travis had shot a LOT of them, my guess was his satchel was almost empty. Which meant he went through nearly a hundred rounds of shotgun, having to reload an eight-round tube one by one, as fast as I had gone through forty or so pistol rounds that could be reloaded with fifteen shot magazines. Humbling.
Travis sat down on a Rambox. Jake jumped up to the roof. I was sure to see Cassie, but he came over to me first and said, "Are you okay?"
I was really touched.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks. Help me get her down." I replied.
I was thinking we would carefully carry her together, maybe jump, maybe climb.
Jake just picked her up and jumped down. That made me feel like a pansy, so I jumped down.
This was a crazy situation.
There was a fire pit. There was gasoline and a large woodpile. Other things could be dragged into the woods and buried and likely never surface again.
It was tempting.
But the men, I counted 16, including the Dark Glass guys, had families.
We talked for a few minutes, Jake and Travis agreed with me.
We pulled out some water from Travis' holding tank and washed Cassie. Her body, but not her head, was covered in the pale white mud plaster and the plaster was covered with the leaves. She was nude beneath, but she wasn't very appealing, her body was covered, as Travis' had been, with deep bruising. Still, I twisty tied the important parts and then duct taped them, then wrapped her in a blanket and duct taped that. Then we put her in my bed and closed it up.
I got two more Glock mags and reloaded everything. Then I got Baby and attached her to the coat's sling mounts and made sure I had four mags for her ready to go. It was closing the barn door after the horse has already run off, but it made me feel better.
I took the shotgun, and nearly empty satchel and put them back in my truck. Then Jake and I left.
"Now remember," I said as I left, "give me 45 minutes before you call."
I drove a ways back down the road until I was on a major highway and we stopped at a rest area.
Travis would call the local authorities then. He later told me about it. He had gone into his house and got his rifle and fired one round before the police arrived.
"I found my place like this." He would say.
What would the police be able to say or do? Travis could prove he had been in Branson the night before. The mass of dead men and critters would clearly not fit with any logical explanation. I was sure it would drive the authorities nuts that they could not explain what happened.
I used my time to check in with some legal experts back at one of my clients. I got the best criminal defense law firm in the state on retainer for Travis. Travis' cabin was south east of Branson. Jake and my credit cards were used in a number of places west of Branson, earlier in the day.
In the end, it was anti-climactic. The law was the local sheriff who had, like most of the senior deputies, grown up with Travis. They knew in their hearts he hadn't killed those men.
The sheriff called in all sorts of other law enforcement including State Police and FBI. They confiscated Travis's rifle as "evidence." However, Travis's basic story couldn't be challenged. He had been away recovering from an injury. He had come home to get some things and check on his place and found what was there. He'd gone in and gotten his rifle for protection while he waited. Something had spooked him while he waited for the police and he had fired the rifle once. They never even ran a gunshot residue test. They collected all kinds of evidence and took all sorts of pictures.
They turned Travis loose that night and he collected some things from his place and drove back up to Branson. As soon as he left his property, he gave me an all clear call. We immediately drove straight home.
In some ways it was like a redo. This time my truck was basically okay. It had a lot of scratches and a number of footprint shaped dents but was basically in good working order.
Jake and I dragged unconscious Cassie down to the basement of the infirmary and strapped her still very unconscious form down. Jake went upstairs to call Kelly. I put my mental shunt into her brain. I used the water and pile of towels to wash Cassie up as much as possible. Then I laid a clean towel across her midsection, I wasn't there for cheap thrills.
Kelly showed up a few minutes later. She checked Cassie's vital signs and put an IV into her.
As soon as Cassie and my other gear was unloaded, I took the truck to Jed's. When I was parked in Jed's lot, I used my pocket knife to slash all the tires. I then went and chatted with Jed.
"Want you to get the four new tires we discussed, and you brought over yesterday on the truck. Take the torn tires to the place I told you about that will turn them into children's playground mulch. Then take the mulch to the place I told you to donate it. If you add at least four tires of your own, you can have the receipt for the tax deduction." I began.
"Will do." He said.
I didn't need the tax deduction. I was on the shallow end, but definitely in the one percent. As such, I paid less in taxes then one of Jed's $12 an hour mechanics.
"It's time to start thinking about a new truck. I'll contact the dealership and get something ordered. I'll also get the panel bits started." 'Panel bits' was the term we used for the armor panels I made. "I want you to start bringing together the parts. I don't want this project hung up for weeks waiting on some small part." I continued.
"Definitely." Jed said with a smile.
Jed and I always have an ongoing conversation about what I would want when it's time to roll out the next truck. I'll admit I'm partial to Rams, but not like most truck guys. For the typical truck guy, brand loyalty is more important than religion and wives. I liked Toyota because I thought they were built better, with better accessories, particularly the factory supercharger, which is amazing. A supercharger that WOULDN'T void the factory warranty, so cool. I liked the Ford for it's aluminum body. That weight reduction would be really valuable for me, but why they couldn't eco-boost a cool V8 I will never know. But I was going with the Dodge again, sigh.
My previous standard truck plan had called for keeping the stock engine and upgrading it with turbos and a supercharger. This time Dodge had pushed me to the edge by continuing to refuse to make their Hemi motor flex-fuel. Also Dodge had a 6.4 and an even better 6.2 motor available now but insisted on only including the rapidly lengthening in the tooth 5.7 in the half-ton. I had intended to wait another year, as that was my normal pattern and I was hoping Dodge would pull it's head out of it's butt, but now I wanted to go forward. This truck had a lot of dents and wear now. It had been to the site of what was probably becoming one of the most notorious mass murders in recent US history. So far, the story hadn't broke. The authorities did that sometimes, when something was too horrible, they didn't want people to panic. They could claim later, if they got caught, that they thought keeping it secret was helping in the investigation in some way. I knew because I could read their e-mail the law enforcement that knew about the cabin were going crazy.
The plan that Jed and I had now for the next truck was to get an engine from a small boutique engine shop. It would be an 8.5-liter V-10 Hemi with beefed up structure and walls. Beefing up structure meant that one could use more boost. When one adds turbo or supercharger to an engine, one is trying to add boost. More boost equals more power. However, the more boost you add, the more likely the engine is to pop. One reason race car engines are so finicky is that race engineers try to stay right at the razor's edge of maximum boost, minimum structure. Less structure means more likely to blow, but also less weight. Less weight equals more fast. This engine we'd been eyeing had a lot more structure meaning we could use a lot more boost. The engine also was made of lots of steel, aluminum and even some ceramic, unlike the Dodge 5.7 Hemi, which used cheap, heavy iron, so it would actually be lighter despite being half-again the size! By the way, the engine would also be flex fuel.
Jed was happy because building me a new truck meant his two favorite things, a chance to do a really serious build and play with state of the art, read expensive, parts and a big pile of money. Out of curiosity, I had broken into Jed's computer system and read his books, I was his most valuable customer and my trucks were a major chunk of his business. Getting to do a new truck a year early, in a traditionally dead time of the year for speed shops was like X-Mas coming twice that year for Jed.
You may have heard my quip about waiting for weeks. Automotive technology, like all other technology has it's high-tech, bleeding edge and imminent. High-tech is what's here and at the high end of quality and price. Bleeding edge is the new bits that are just coming out and cost way more than they should for the tiny improvements they provide. Imminent is the stuff that's not even out yet but people think is about to come out and promises major improvement. There was a new kind if injector that we had wanted to use in the current truck. It was supposed to be out in time for the build. It kept getting delayed and delayed and we tried to work around them, and in the end, we got them, and they delivered as promised, but they had delayed the build by a month. It wasn't really Jed's fault, but it had been really frustrating all the same.
While my new tires went on, the detailing guys showed up. Since the minivan, I'd done some research to find out who did that kind of work. I found the outfit that DiAngelo used. They would come to you, so the police couldn't just key on their place of business. For an extra fee, the detail would go from very thorough to will not be able to provide evidence for forensic search. I had Jed take me home, they'd be detailing for a while.
Travis got back to Omaha the next day and went straight to his place to unload. Then he started running counter-surveillance.
I went back to the forge. I knew what I wanted to make next.
You may be wondering why I still have a big pile of bolts and why I don't make more non-magical stuff with my nifty new forge. It would build my skills. The problem is, anything I put magic into is a piece of me. If someone bad got a hold of one of those bolts they could use them to work magic on me. I could probably make some pretty spiffy forge work and sell it for some good money. But I don't need money and anything I forged, even if I didn't put magic into it, would also be a piece of me. Old magical craft-hands probably have some sort of trick to prevent it, but Mr. Guna hadn't shown it to me and hell if I had figured it out on my own. Remember, I'm really good at knitting together other people's solutions, I suck at figuring out new ones on my own.
I'd used my axe twice recently, not in the way it had been intended. I figured my new axe should be built more around that idea. I liked the idea of creating something designed to break slave bonds, magical and practical. I might not be able to just throw the bolts away, but they made wonderful raw material for forging. I started beating out the head that day.
Travis showed up the next day. He looked the same as before we went down, except now he was wearing a beat-up old leather jacket.
I had to ask.
"What exactly were you wanting to get down there?"
He let out a frustrated breath and said, "There were a few knick-knacks I wanted nearby if I was going to be here for a while, but mostly this jacket, my backup pistol and rifle."
"Well, you got the jacket?" I answered sheepishly. He was clearly upset.
"It's just frustrating. I'm not like you. I've never had a lot of money, but I earned a decent living. Saved up. I didn't have a huge amount in the bank, but I had some nice things. I had a nice Jeep, a good rifle, pistol, knife. Some decent clothes. A good hat. Money in my pocket I'd earned to buy a drink. Maybe buy a drink for a pretty girl. My whole life just feels like it got flushed down the toilet. I thought if I could just get my rifle and pistol, at least I could feel like I could defend myself."
"What happened to your guns?" I asked. I didn't know about the rifle yet.
He explained what he did with the rifle and what had happened to it. I'm not a legal genius, but if the rifle was in for "evidence," then it was gone. They would never be able to solve the case of what happened to those 16 men. But with so many dead, they would never close it either and they wouldn't give up the rifle if they couldn't close the case.
"What about the pistol?" I asked.
"With all those lawmen sniffing about having already confiscated my rifle? I could pull it out and it would be in the joint too. Maybe me with it. Lot of those Fibbies are back east kind of people, don't understand the concept of an armed private individual. Just seeing the rifle had me half-way into the back of car. As is, it's stuck in the safe under the floorboards until further notice. Not like we want to go back down and give Garbage Man another shot at us for a pistol." He answered, clearly frustrated.
"Well that's true." I thought.
I was about to say something about buying a good new hat in St. Joseph. It's on the way back and there's a Stetson outlet store. It's THE place to get a good new hat. Luckily, my empathy kicked in before my big mouth. A big part of the problem was that Travis was a proud and decent man and didn't want to take charity, not for a new hat. Every penny he took from me probably stuck in his craw. At one level, I liked that. At another it was frustrating, I could just buy him whatever gear could be had for money and would be happy to do it.
"I know we're in a sucky situation." I said. "I have a life I'd like to lead. I know I must look pretty comfortable up here, and, in some ways, let's be honest, I am. Still, there are all sorts of things I'd like to do but can't. I was down to one Three Gun match a year, and after meeting you, that's down to zero. I'd like to meet more women too, that's pretty much frozen. I'd like to be spending my intellectual energy publishing papers and doing something which pushes the boundaries of human knowledge, not spending every second trying to figure out how to make myself more ready to fight. More important, the list of what I can't do is getting consistently longer, not shorter. The three of us are all screwed. As long as we're on this guy's radar and we must be top-of-the-shitlist on his radar now, we're all screwed. None of us gets to live the life we want most, even Jake, and he's a good kid. I know Kelly and Jake worry about putting Michael in danger. Thank goodness neither of us have something like that on our heads. At least not as directly as they do.
"All that said, we're in a life and death situation and we're in it together. If we were all stuck in a remote cabin, and there was a crazy snow storm with sub-freezing temperatures and one of us had food and one had firewood and one had a lighter and blankets we would share to survive. If you took a blanket from me, it wouldn't be charity. Just common sense. You bring a lot to the table. We just fought a major battle and won, in no small part, thanks to you."
"What do you mean?" He interrupted. "You're the one who jumped on that roof."
"The way you used that shotgun rocked her back on her heels. She wanted us all grabbed before she made her speech. Cassie's not a military tactical genius. She didn't realize we were running out of ammo. She stopped the fight because she didn't realize how far we were against the wall and how strong her position was. She didn't realize it mostly because of you and the way you handled that shotgun. If you weren't part of the equation, she might have pulled that same move as Jake and I left a restaurant together. She would have probably given us that offer when we were tied up on the ground, with hoods on our heads and boots on our necks.
"I don't know how long this thing will last. A day. A week. A month. A year. Forever. We may still lose. We've won each fight so far, but none by more than a whisker. I happen to have money. Helping you with that money makes us all more likely to survive. Let me help. If we ever win this, maybe we can go onto more normal lives, maybe not, there's always another crazy predator in the ocean. While we're under siege, let's make the best of it."
"I guess if you put it that way, okay." He said.
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