A Powerless World , Hunt, Jack [easy novels to read txt] 📗

The comment caught him off guard.

“Who you been talking to?”

“No one. Rumors get around.”

“Yeah. Well, ignore them. They’re full of shit.”

Ricky threw his hands up. “All right, man, I wasn’t meaning any offense.”

“None taken,” he said, making his way back to his horse. As soon as they were mounted, they high-tailed it out of there, heading back home to report what he’d seen. While Seth couldn’t confirm if there had been an attack, one thing was sure, if the militia had made it up, it certainly would have bolstered their cause of disarming locals.

Right now, Seth couldn’t see how it mattered. If they were heading back to the hills, whatever the militia had in mind, it was more than likely for the city of Eureka.

“Are you sure you didn’t go to the wrong checkpoint?” his father asked after they returned with nothing to offer but a few words from a meth head’s brother. The rest of their family were busy preparing the farm for what could have been only concluded as an attack by the Rikers, but that wasn’t the talk on his father’s lips that evening.

“I swear. They all looked calm. No sense of an impending attack.”

“What game are they playing?” Hank put a hand on Seth’s shoulder. “Give me a hand out back. Derek, you too.”

They followed him to a shed where he took out a couple of shovels. “What are those for?” Their father didn’t answer. Then they followed him over to the truck and he brought down the tailgate and pulled back the tarp to reveal two bodies in the back. They were militia soldiers.

“What the hell?” Seth said.

“Bury them.”

Seth looked at Derek and then at his father.

“Did I stutter?”

“Dad. Was it you?”

“Was it what?”

“That attacked the checkpoint?”

“Of course not.”

“But he said that two of their guys were killed.”

“Yes, they were. Just take your shovels, strip them, bury them and stop asking questions.” He turned to walk away and then looked back at them. “And Seth. Not a word about this goes beyond here, you understand?”

He nodded. There was so much about his father that he didn’t understand. Decisions he made, who died, who lived. One moment he was getting in his face over slapping Miriam around, and the next burying two militia members. Derek gave him a hand as they removed the men out of their uniforms. Both had been shot in the back of the head.

“I don’t think I will ever understand that man,” Seth said.

“Ours is not to question why but to…”

“Do or die,” Seth finished what Derek was about to say. His father often said it. “Maybe I’m getting a little tired of doing and nearly dying for someone who keeps his cards close to his chest and doesn’t bring us into his plan.” He looked up to the cabin and saw his father talking with their sisters, putting them to work, rolling out barbed wire around the fencing. After stripping the soldiers naked, they dragged their bodies deep into the woods. Seth jammed the shovel into the earth and left it there, taking a moment to have a cigarette.

“C’mon, man, we should get them buried.”

“I’ll bury them when I’m good and ready,” Seth said, trying to figure out what was happening. “You ever wonder why he would send us down to ask about an attack when we were in the meeting and heard it directly from the captain? Or why we are burying two militia members but keeping their uniforms?”

“Dad works in mysterious ways, dude, I gave up asking questions a long time ago,” he said, jabbing the shovel into the earth and beginning the arduous task of digging down at least four feet. It wasn’t the first time they’d buried people out there. Before that, it had been folks his father had ripped off, or who had ripped them off. At least ten hippies that had come out to work on their farm were buried here. Seth never forgot them. How could he when he passed their missing flyers every day in town?

“Anyway, have you given much thought to the whole Martha Riker thing?” Derek asked, leaning on his shovel and taking a break from digging. “The agreement. Do you think she meant it?”

“Don’t for one minute think that the Rikers have good intentions. They don’t.”

“Do you know Colby’s back?”

“What?”

“I saw him at the cemetery today.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Slipped my mind. I was picking up a propane canister from Darryl’s place. I saw Dan Wilder head into the cemetery with Johnson, they came out twenty minutes later. I’m asking myself what business would he have in a graveyard. Not long after, Colby rode out of there.”

“Figures. Dan is playing both sides of the fence.”

“That wasn’t the shocking part.” He stopped digging and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Riding on the back was someone who looked like Skye.”

He laughed. “Yeah right, let me guess, she rose from the dead. Were you drinking?”

“Yeah, just a few, but I swear she was the spitting image.”

“You need to lay off the moonshine,” Seth said, jabbing him. He chuckled as they continued burying the soldiers.

Chapter Six

The disappearance of two of his men had called for extreme measures.

Captain Evans couldn’t have the county thinking they couldn’t perform their job. Doubt was a vicious seed that could take root and spread like wildfire. The decision to come up with a cover story about an attack had required purposely injuring one of his men with a round to the shoulder and removing locals from their usual post.

Tackett, a nutcase he’d known for over ten years, was more than willing to take one for the team. That kind of loyalty couldn’t be bought. It was ingrained in them. Years of combat experience, operating side by side. Brothers in arms, they knew what it took to get the mission done, and this was exactly that, nothing more than a mission.

The best part was that idiot Sheriff Wilder had bought it.

If