He had tried to raise this issue ahead of time, of providing medical care to the enemy, but he had never reached an agreement with the medical staff or the Homestead committee.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Jeff shouted over top of the chaos, “I respect and honor your commitment to treating the wounded. But we will NOT be keeping enemy combatants here, nor will we be providing them medical aid.”
The doctors and nurses howled in protest, but Jeff brooked no discussion. He couldn’t allow enemy eyes inside the Homestead wire, observing their resources, noting their defensive strength and consuming their precious medical supplies. Every moment these wounded men remained here, the risk increased that they would contribute information to the next attack.
Jeff scooped up a man from a gurney, shot in the gut, and threw him over his shoulder. An IV line popped out of his arm and the attending nurse shrieked in anger. Jeff walked to his OHV, and dumped the moaning man into the truck bed.
Jeff ignored the raging protests from the nurses and doctors. He scooped up another man, this man shot several times, and sat him beside his comrade.
The medical staff went crazy. Some of them tried to physically block Jeff from their patients. Jeff brushed them aside, men and women both. Other nurses and doctors worked even faster on their patients, trying to give whatever aid they could before Jeff came, like a pugnacious Grim Reaper.
Jeff loaded four enemy combatants unceremoniously into the back of his OHV and ordered the commander of QRF Two to stand guard, not allowing anyone but Homestead troops to receive medical aid.
Leaving screaming nurses and bellowing doctors in his dust, Jeff roared up the mountain to the upper perimeter at the top of the ridge, some two miles behind the Homestead, intent on laying the dying men beside other dead trespassers.
“Don’t leave me here to die,” one man pleaded as Jeff lifted him out of the back of the OHV.
“Why wouldn’t I? You tried to kill my family.” Jeff sat the man back down in the small bed of the OHV, half on top of the man’s friend, who looked like he might have died on the trip up the mountain.
“You tried to kill my family first,” the dying man croaked.
“How so?”
“You poisoned our water. We found the rotting porcupine you buried in our stream. That was our bug-out location. We had nowhere else to go. You made our kids sick. One little girl in our camp, she died because of the bad water. You attacked us first. We didn’t see it coming and that camp was the only way we were going to survive this thing. So we fought back. But don’t leave me here to die, please.”
“Humph.” Jeff neither confirmed nor denied poisoning the stream. He hadn’t thought about the porcupine since he had put it in the Beringers’ water supply two weeks ago. Had he caused this attack? He didn’t like that idea at all.
“You’re from the Beringers?” Jeff drilled down, hoping he wasn’t.
“Dick Beringer.” The gut-shot man reached out a blood-and-gut-soaked hand to Jeff. Out of reflex, Jeff shook the dying man’s hand.
“I can’t take you back to your camp,” Jeff blurted out his bottom line. His fault or not, he couldn’t endanger his family and the rest of the families by allowing this man to return to his camp.
“Then can you stay with me while I die?”
Jeff sagged in his own skin like the air had gone out of him. He rolled his neck and gathered the man in his arms. Jeff propped him against the wheel of the OHV and lowered himself down to sit beside the Beringer man.
Jeff had sat beside many dying men. With the battle over, he had always felt begrudging respect for any man who fought for a cause, no matter how mistaken their philosophies. Given the circumstances this night, it was an easy choice to see this man as a fellow sword-bearer off to Valhalla.
“Talk to me,” Dick Beringer pleaded.
“What do you want me to talk about?” Jeff asked.
“It doesn’t matter. Tell me about yourself.”
Jeff babbled about his military career, starting from his early days in the army, serving in Asia and making his way to his many deployments in the Middle East. Jeff talked for ten minutes, looking into the night, before turning back to Dick Beringer. While he had talked, the man had passed.
Jeff wiped his face, only then realizing that his hand smelled like guts. He sat next to the corpse of Dick Beringer for another fifteen minutes, taking in the smell of death, mingled with the scent of autumn. He needed a little time just to sit. It had been a very bad night.
After there was nothing else to think, Jeff got up and carried the dead men, one by one, over to the fence posts marking the boundary of the Homestead. He leaned one dead man against each post, a warning to others who might trespass.
It was almost dawn, and Jacquelyn sat on a plastic chair in the infirmary, her hands hanging between her legs, staring at Tom’s body. Like a lawn mower that refused to start, she couldn’t get her mind up to speed to accept this latest piece of information.
Her husband was dead. He had been shot by one of the Homestead’s own men. Nobody would tell her who.
It was information, like numbers in a column on a massive spreadsheet that she couldn’t begin to understand. It didn’t help that she hadn’t slept and it was six in the morning.
The kids were asleep in the bunkhouse. How was she going to tell them their father was dead? She needed someone to give her the words because she wasn’t coming up with anything.
Kids, your daddy’s gone to heaven…
She and Tom hadn’t made religion a priority. Talking about heaven wouldn’t mean anything to the kids.
Kids, your daddy died last night protecting us…
What would happen when they found out he had been killed by another Homestead man by accident?
Kids, I’m falling apart, and I’m not capable of being your mommy anymore because your daddy is dead, and I don’t have the faintest clue what to do next…
Oh, my sweet lord. She could not, would not, make this worse for them. But Tom’s death would change them, and not for the better. They would break, each in some fundamental way, and then spend the rest of their lives trying to heal that wound. She had seen it over and over again as a therapist. Less than an hour from now, her kids would receive a shock they could not bear, and their sweet, innocent minds would rip, and blackness would flow into the wounds, forever darkening their lives.
Oh, God, why?
Her mind turned again to God, even though she didn’t really believe in Him. So why did she keep thinking about Him as though He were gravity pulling her at every turn.
Oh, God, be with my children. Make the wounds such that they can heal. I know the wounds will be deep, but make them not so deep as to forever scar.
There she was again, praying to a God she didn’t know existed.
Give me the words. Give me the heart. Carry me and hold them as I tell them their father is lying on a plastic table, lifeless forever.
And then she felt God around her like a blanket. Or maybe it was the universe. It was something. Whatever it was, she felt not-alone for a moment.
It will be okay.
From the bottom of her soul, she cried for her children. Then she cried for herself. Then she cried for this simple, honest man who only ever meant to be a good man.
It will be okay.
Oh, God, please be real and please make it okay.
Jacquelyn gathered herself and headed to the bunkhouse to see if her children were awake. Maybe they would still be asleep, and maybe she could spend a few minutes with them in bed, just smelling their hair.
If she could have that, she could make it through this day.