Without Law 11 Read online

  Eric Vall

  Chapter 1

  I blew dust off a box of parts on the shelf of the tractor supply store we were in. Rolly needed a part for the tractor to get it running so we could use it for planting and harvesting, and we’d already been to four other towns that day with no luck. Montpelier was our last stop, so if we didn’t find it that meant another trip out tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, until we found this elusive part.

  Who knew that finding an overhaul kit for a 70s era gas powered engine would be so damn difficult?

  It was probably as easy as making a phone call or looking it up online before the EMP hit. But now, everywhere was picked over or ransacked, which made finding one part in particular nearly impossible.

  It had been almost a week since we had arrived back from Brody’s fort and our refinery mission, and though everyone had been happy to see us, there had been a lot to discuss. When I first told everyone that Brody wanted us to stay with him, there had been a few of the civilians from the elementary school who had thought it sounded like a good idea. Of course, none of the farmers were on board. They had barely been willing to leave their houses to survive winter, so there was no way they’d leave them to go stay at some fort with a guy they didn’t even know. It had taken me months to get them to trust me enough to convince them that they wouldn’t survive at the farm houses during winter, but eventually they had come around. And considering the amount of Canadians that had come through, it was a damn good thing.

  Overall, the group had decided that we would continue to tough it out on our own, at least for the time being. We had fuel now, and once we got the tractor fixed, we would be on our way to having a huge harvest come fall. Plus, we had running water and solar electricity at the campus, so there wasn’t much Brody could offer us.

  I thought the others who voted yes had just liked the idea of living somewhere well protected. We had all been through winter together, and they saw what we had to do to protect ourselves. The idea of a fort seemed nice, even to me at times.

  There was one issue, though. We needed more fuel to finish our harvest in the fall, and Brody wanted one of our tractors as payment for the fuel. We had received fifteen drums from the mission, but that wouldn’t be enough for the whole summer and the fall harvest. Not only did we need to keep up with the fields, but we’d also need to go on runs to gather supplies, and we would definitely need more fuel before harvest time came.

  I was so pissed when he had made me that offer, that I had virtually stormed out of the fort without saying another damn word. It was ludicrous. We only had the two tractors, and neither was working at the moment. We’d really only have one, and that was once we found this part and Rolly was able to get it fixed. I didn’t have faith that the other one would be able to be repaired, though I had asked Rolly to take another look.

  The shop we were in was filled to the brim with dust, and while it hadn’t been ransacked too badly, I had yet to find much that we could use. The whole town was eerie and abandoned, but the amount of dust and grime in this tractor shop was about to drive me crazy. I couldn’t touch any surface without getting dirt all over my hands, pants, face, whatever. Not to mention how much of it I had already breathed in. This fuckin’ part would be the death of me, but it was too damn important to give up on. If we didn’t find this part, then that meant no tractor, which meant a much smaller harvest than what we needed for the amount of people we had.

  I tossed the box of useless parts on the ground behind me with a crash and took a deep breath.

  “You alright?” Anna, my beautiful, redheaded second in command, asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said and I waved her off.

  “You don’t seem fine,” Tara, the busty platinum blonde, called out from a few shelves over.

  “We’ll find the part,” Paige, the mousy brunette, said with a smile.

  “Yeah,” Bailey, my resident blonde hippie, added.

  “Thanks,” I chuckled. “I just got a little irritated is all.”

  “Well I can’t say I blame you,” Tara said. “We’ve been at this all fuckin’ day.”

  “There’s only so many tractor supply stores around here,” Paige said.

  “And we’ve hit all of them,” the platinum blonde retorted.

  “Well, yeah,” the brunette chuckled. “But if we don’t find it here, there are still others.”

  It was already late afternoon, and we all knew that if we didn’t find it today, we’d have to head home empty handed. Sure, we’d found a few useful things on our trip, some tarps, fencing wire, chicken feed, and the like, but we really needed that part. That thing was the whole point of the run, and we’d have to set out again in the morning if we didn’t find it. Which meant that we’d have to go even farther and find more obscure shops to hit. Paige had located every tractor or big rig supply store within a fifty-mile radius, and this was the last stop, so I took a deep breath and went back to combing through the dusty shelves.

  “Hey,” Tara called out. “I think I found it.”

  “Really?” My stomach fluttered as I headed toward the platinum blonde.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Overhaul kit, right?”

  “Yes,” Paige confirmed as she came up behind me. “But it’s got to be for a gas powered engine.”

  “It says gas and LPG,” Tara said as she read the box. “What’s LPG?”

  “Liquefied petroleum gas,” I said as I grabbed the box and looked it over. The kit was heavy, and the box had a very 80s looking picture of a dude on a green tractor. The inside was dusty as hell, but I inspected the contents and found that everything seemed to be in place.

  “Hell yeah!” Paige exclaimed over my shoulder. “This is it!”

  “Nicely done,” I told Tara with a grin.

  “Thank you, thank you,” the platinum blonde said with a mock bow.

  “What are we waiting for?” Anna asked with a grin. “We got the part, let’s get going.”

  “Let’s take a look around and see what else we can find,” I said. “We got the part, so we’re in no rush now.”

  “Fair enough,” the redhead replied with a shrug.

  I looked over the contents of the box once more as the girls fanned out to scour the store. Everything was there, and the mission had been accomplished for the day. My mood had lifted instantly, and I couldn’t help but smile as I started to look through the store as well.

  I grabbed any specialty tractor tools that I saw just in case we needed them at some point, and I put them in the pile with the overhaul kit.

  “So, no run tomorrow, huh?” Bailey asked as she moved along the shelf beside me.

  “Seems that way,” I said with a smile.

  “You’re obviously happy about that,” she chuckled.

  “I’m just glad we’ll be able to get this damn tractor going, finally,” I said with a shake of my head. “I don’t mind going on runs, but it’s nice to be able to be home.”

  “Yeah,” she sighed. “It has been rough since we got back. It seems like one thing after another.”

  “Things pile up when you’re off taking over refineries,” I joked.

  “I guess so,” she laughed. “But I’m just happy to be home. We’ve had a lot to do, but I don’t mind. I like doing things for our people.”

  “It is nice,” I agreed with a smile. Bailey was so incredibly sweet, and I knew she would help anyone she could if she had the means to, so it only made sense that she enjoyed helping our little makeshift family. “You didn’t like helping the civilians at the fort?”

  “Of course,” she said, like it wasn’t even a question. “But Brody’s offer about the tractor is just crazy. I missed our routine and being home. And Rolly and Betty, and Winchester of course.”

  I
smiled at the thought of the greeting we had received from the black headed dog when we had gotten back from our trip. He loved all of us, but we all knew that Bailey was his favorite. He had stuck right by her side for days after we had gotten home.

  “I was thinking about the tractor offer as well,” I sighed. “I’m not sure what we’re going to do about it, not yet at least.”

  “We have time to figure it out,” Bailey said, and she laid her hand gently on my arm.

  I leaned down and kissed the blonde on the forehead. She was usually the last one to pipe up her opinion when we were in a group, but one on one she really came out of her shell. It was nice to hear her thoughts on things, and to get some of the positivity that always radiated from her. No matter the circumstances, my hippie was nothing if not an optimist.

  A few minutes later I called everyone back to the pile that we had created on the counter of the small store.

  “Alright,” I said. “Let’s get going. I want to get home as soon as possible.”

  “I found some seed packets,” Paige said, and she happily added them to the pile. I was happy to see her use her arm fully once more. She had injured it while taking down one of the refinery guys with a knife. The guy had caught her off guard and pulled her to the concrete floor. She had a nasty gash on her elbow, and ever since then we’d spent a few minutes each night sparring to improve her knife skills. The brunette was a natural at many things, but not when it came to a blade. She really had to work for her skills there, but soon she would be an expert.

  “Perfect,” I told her. She said ‘some’, but it looked like there were at least a hundred in the two grocery sacks that she set on the counter.

  “I agree,” Anna said. “This town is creepy as hell, we got the part, let’s get going.”

  “Okay, Miss Horror Movie,” Tara snorted. “You’re creeped out by this place?”

  “Aren’t you?” Bailey asked, and she peered outside through the glass. The sun was low on the horizon and the town was cast in a deep orange that highlighted just how deserted it was.

  The place had been a ghost town when we pulled up, and I was surprised to see as much considering it was the state capital. I hadn’t been to the place in years, and I had forgotten how small it was. The population was less than ten thousand people according to the sign as you entered the city, and while the town wasn’t tiny, it definitely wasn’t large. There were some old shops, some newer ones, a few restaurants, and houses, but that was pretty much it. The most impressive part of the whole town was the capital building. We had driven by it on our way to the part shop, and while it definitely looked beautiful at one point, it had lost its former glory. The top of the building was painted a bright golden color, or at least it had been the last time I was there, but now it had turned a dingy bronze from the weather and lack of cleaning. The flower gardens that surrounded it were overgrown and dead at the same time, and it had a layer of grime on it to match the rest of the town.

  “Well, yeah,” Tara answered Bailey’s question and pulled me out of my thoughts. “This place is absolutely creepy.”

  “You guys are only saying that because it’s such a small town,” Paige said with an eye roll. “It’s no more abandoned than any of the other towns we’ve been to.”

  “Pretty sure it is,” Anna said, and she cocked her hip out to the side. “Everything is ransacked here, but it’s like, there’s no graffiti or broken bottles. It’s weird.”

  “I guess that is strange,” Paige admitted.

  “We won’t be here for much longer,” I chuckled. “Let’s get this stuff in the truck and head out.”

  I picked up the box for the overhaul kit, but as I did, I heard the faint sound of an engine, so I paused and tilted my head toward the window.

  “What?” Tara asked, and she eyed me like I was crazy.

  “Shh,” Bailey said, and she cocked her head to listen as well. “Don’t you hear that?”

  “No,” Tara scoffed.

  “Listen,” Bailey directed.

  The girls all fell silent as they listened. The sound was faint, but after a few seconds we heard the unmistakable sound of an engine accelerate, and all the girls’ eyes went wide.

  “There’s someone here,” Anna hissed.

  “Everyone get down,” I said as I pulled them behind the counter.

  I crept over to the window and peered out, but I didn’t see anything. I could still hear the engine, so I knew whoever was there was close.

  “Do you see anything?” Tara asked as she popped her head up next to mine.

  “Nothing,” I sighed. “They must be further down the street.”

  “We should go up to the roof,” Bailey suggested.

  “Is there roof access on this building?” Paige asked, her eyebrows pulled together in confusion.

  “Yeah,” Bailey confirmed. “I saw it earlier when we were looking around.”

  “Lead the way,” I told her.

  Bailey nodded and headed toward the back of the building. We followed her into a dark hallway that led to what appeared to be a manager’s office. The place was dingy, with no window to speak of, even though it was in the back corner of the building, but what it did have was a small ladder in the corner.

  The roof access must have been built in later as a way to keep the place up to fire codes. The small ladder led up to a little latch that opened up to the roof. I assumed there was a ladder leading down to the ground from the roof as well, but who knew if it was still there. The ladder in front of us looked like it had been rusty for years before the EMP had hit, but I guessed in such a small town people tended to let things like fire safety slide.

  Bailey handed her rifle to Anna, climbed up the ladder easily, undid the latch, and pulled herself up.

  “Hey,” she said through the hole, “don’t stand up when you get up here. There’s only a small ledge.”

  “Here,” Anna said as she handed her both of their rifles.

  “Got ‘em,” Bailey said, then she reached down for Tara’s, Paige’s, and mine.

  The girls seemed to have no problem as they climbed up the ladder and through the hatch door, but as soon as I put my weight on the small, metal bars, I could feel that they weren’t sturdy. There was definitely a wiggle to them, not that it was a long way up, but a wiggly support system is never comforting.

  I thought my troubles were over once I reached the hatch, but I soon realized that I was just a bit too big to fit through easily. I had to do one arm at a time, then pull my legs through the same way.

  “You alright over there?” Tara snickered.

  “Just peachy,” I answered with a grin as I finally made it all the way through and army crawled over to the girls.

  Bailey was right, there was only a small ledge on the roof, and if we stood up, we would be visible to anybody who happened to look up, so we stayed close to the ground as we crawled over to the edge.

  “It sounds like there’s more than one now,” Anna said as we crawled.

  “It does,” I agreed.

  When we were in the shop I had heard only one engine, but now there were definitely two, and they were revving periodically. Who the hell could be out here?

  And why the fuck were they wasting fuel?

  We made it to the edge, and I peered over and scanned the area. The town was small, and you could nearly see the whole thing from where we were, but so far I didn’t see any signs of the vehicles. The sound of the engines had died down as well.

  “Where the hell are they?” I whispered aloud.

  “Do you think they left?” Bailey asked.

  “Not likely,” Anna answered.

  “Wait,” Tara said. “I hear something.”

  The engines had roared to life once more, and I heard them accelerate down the street.

  “Come on, show yourself,” Bailey muttered as she moved her rifle to her side so she could get it up quickly.

  A moment later two jeeps came into view a few streets over. They had been hid
den by the taller buildings before, but now they were out in the open.

  “Where the fuck is everyone getting these jeeps?” Anna scoffed.

  “Jeep are like, the official car of Vermont,” Tara said.

  “I thought that was Subaru,” Bailey mused. “Or those late 80s Volvo wagons.”

  “Only for hippies,” Tara snickered, and Bailey playfully punched her in the arm.

  We had seen a lot of Jeeps lately. Brody’s group had several, and the men we had taken down at the refinery used only Jeeps as well. I figured it was partly because jeep parts were so universal and easy to come across. They were also pretty rugged vehicles, so it made sense that they would be a quick target for apocalypse survivors.

  The jeeps that these men drove were tan, and they had some makeshift spikes stuck out of the front and rear bumpers.

  Definitely the doings of somebody who thought they were a badass, but were probably just a dumbass.

  I counted four men in each jeep, and the ones in the back stood with M16s pointed out toward the street. They cruised along slowly, but revved the engine every so often, to alert people to their presence I guessed, which seemed like a stupid idea from where I was sitting, but most of the goons we had come across weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed.

  “What are they doing here?” Paige asked after a moment.

  “Patrolling,” I said grimly.

  Chapter 2

  “What do you mean patrolling?” Tara asked with a deep sigh.

  “You know what I mean,” I said.

  “I know,” she sighed again. “I’m just pissed we have to deal with these assholes before we can go home now.”

  “What are they patrolling for, you think?” Bailey piped up.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I would imagine they’re looking for anybody who happened to stumble upon this place.”

  “Do you think they’re from the refinery?” Paige asked, her eyes narrowed in concentration.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “At least not directly, but they have fuel--”

  “And jeeps,” Anna cut in.

  “And jeeps,” I contended, “so they probably at least knew the guys at the refinery.”