Digger walked over to Francisco, the fear of imminent death dancing in his eyes. In a flash, Francisco whipped his straight razor out of his back pocket and waved it past Digger’s throat. For a moment, nothing happened. Then Digger coughed. A gout of blood exploded from a straight, dark line that appeared across his throat. Digger’s hands flew to his neck, but his head tipped back unnaturally, as though all the muscles and tendons had sprung loose at once. His hands caught his now-floppy head, returning it to its proper place. Blood cascaded down the front of his shirt. His eyes looked down at his chest, he crumpled to his knees, fell over sideways and died.
Aleki held up his hand and the men surrounding them paused.
“It’s a good start.” Aleki looked down at Digger’s corpse and spit on his still-warm face.
Francisco continued as though nothing had happened, as though there weren’t a hundred men standing around them ready to tear them limb from limb. He wiped his straight razor on the inside of his shirt, taking his time, folded it carefully and slipped it into his back pocket. “We can give you half a semi-load of dried and canned food if you lend us a hundred fighting men two days from today.”
The big Polynesian thought about the offer, mulling over his options. He had clearly planned on ambushing the Latinos and killing them. The possibility of food seemed to give him pause.
“Give us a full semi-load of food, give each one of my men a gun and ammunition, and add two hundred bottles of booze to the deal. Then, maybe I’ll consider not killing you right now.” Aleki negotiated from a position of strength.
“Fuck you,” Francisco countered, glossing over the threat. “I’ll give your men guns and ammunition, half a semi-load of food, and one hundred bottles of hard liquor. That’s my final offer.”
Aleki considered the deal, curling his lip. “Who’d we be fighting?”
“Do you really care?” Francisco challenged, knowing the Polys were a warrior clan and they would relish any chance to do battle.
“Not really,” Aleki chuckled. “I might want to know if we were going to fight the army or police or something.”
“We’ll be fighting white people—rich white people. Stupid people. Can you handle that?”
Aleki waved away the question. “Okay. Half a semi of food, guns for all hundred of my men and a hundred and fifty bottles of booze.” He stood up from the bench.
“Okay. Let’s do it.” The men shook hands, reaching across the bloodless body of Digger.
14
“…KELLEY BARRACKS IN STUTTGART, GERMANY is still holding out. They killed a bunch of ISIS fighters trying to rush the base gate. But they’re running out of food now, so keep them in your prayers if you’re into that.
“Here’s a weird story: Jennifer Watts, a Drinkin’ Bro-ette off of Galveston, Texas radioed in from a flotilla of boats all tied together in the Gulf of Mexico. They can’t make landfall because of the gangs out of Houston, so they’re just drifting around, eating whatever fish they can catch. A cargo ship carrying produce out of Brazil called in yesterday and I think I’ve got it on a rendezvous course with the flotilla. I’m like the Tinder of hungry people now, using ham radio to hook up grub to girls and girls to grub.
“Strange days. This is not what I thought I’d be doing when I grew up…”
Ross Homestead
Oakwood, Utah
Jeff awoke from a dark dream to knocking at his door. He grappled with a maelstrom of emotion as the nightmare faded. It was one of those dreams that felt like a portent, heavy with apprehension and malignancy, a harbinger of ill fate.
In the nightmare, Jeff had been fighting a Norse battle with a shortsword in his hand. He was losing, surrounded by death, but still slashing and hacking his way through the enemy. He felt the deceptively painless sensation of razor-sharp cuts, draining him. Life slipped away with each slice. His consciousness ebbed. His family drifted farther and farther away. He grew slower, less able to parry the blades of the enemy. His feet mired in sludge. His arms hung heavy.
The knocking finally dragged him free from the nightmare. Rarely did anyone wake up earlier than Jeff. He and Tara had moved into a guest suite in the big house. They were finally getting some uninterrupted sleep.
Jeff grabbed a t-shirt from his cluttered nightstand and answered the door in his underwear. It was Walter Ross, another committee member. “Something’s up. There’s an emergency meeting in the office.”
“Hold on a moment.” Jeff closed the door, leaving Walter standing in the foyer. With a big gulp of air, Jeff realized he had been holding his breath, fearing bad news about his son. He figured the emergency meeting would wait for him to brush his teeth, so he made short work of it. He grabbed sweats, running socks and running shoes and headed out the door barefoot.
As soon as he exited the suite, closing the door softly so as not to wake Tara or the kids, Walter filled him in. “Tim Masterson is dead. Someone shot him in front of his house last night. Do you know anything about that?” Walter looked crosswise at Jeff as they walked down the gallery, heading for the office wing.
Obviously, Jeff would be the prime suspect. Killing Masterson made sense. Jeff probably should have killed him, but he hadn’t. “I didn’t kill him,” Jeff answered.
“Well, the assumption is that one of our men killed him. So the next question is, did you order it?”
“No, I did not.”
“Be prepared to answer those questions again…” Walter opened the office wing door and showed Jeff in. About three-quarters of the committee were already there, milling around, agitated.
“Let’s get started. Everyone please find a seat,” Jason Ross started the meeting. “Tim Masterson from the Cherry Harvest Ward is dead, shot in front of his house last night, apparently from a long-range rifle shot. I’m guessing the neighborhood suspects we had something to do with it.”
“Well, did we?” Burke Ross interrupted.
Everyone looked at Jeff. “I didn’t kill him, and I didn’t order him killed.”
The faces in the room showed one of two reactions—either relief or doubt. Because of Jeff’s background with clandestine government activities, almost everyone believed Jeff played games with information, that he wasn’t to be trusted. The group saw him as something of a spook, and it showed in their expressions.
“I’m only going to say this one more time. I didn’t kill Masterson nor did I order it or even suggest it. I probably should have killed him because that asshole was well on his way to compromising our safety. But I didn’t.” The room sat in silence for a long minute.
“Well,” Jason broke the silence, “does anyone have anything they want to add to that?”
Nobody spoke. The relief in the room was palpable. Even if Jeff was lying, the murder wouldn’t be on their collective conscience. They could deny involvement.
“This is going to make it hard with the Elk Ridge Ward and the stake president,” Burke Ross spoke up. “They’re already dragging their feet about working with us. This will throw them into even more confusion. With all the guns on the mountain right now and in the streets, there’s no way they can pin this on us. But they will suspect us, and that’ll make them slow to cooperate.”
Jeff shook his head. “Right now they’re worth less than tits on a hog. Almost all their guys who we had been training left to train with Masterson. We’re not losing anything we haven’t already lost. We’re working around the problem as we speak.