“Y-yes.”
Roman said, “If you answer to my satisfaction I’ll let you walk away. But be warned: if I ever see you again, anywhere at any time, I’ll shoot you on the spot and I won’t ask what you were doing there either. Is that clear enough?”
Again, without hesitation: “Yes.”
“Where did y’all come from?”
“From across the river, about a mile past the bridge. County Road 1351. Take it east half a mile. It’s the old brick house on the right with Campbell on the mail box.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Six total, three now, ‘cept I won’t be going back, so there’s two left.”
“How long y’all been there?”
“Two days. We walked in from Hillsboro. There’s no food in Hillsboro so we left and started looking for a place with food. We found the Campbell place, an old couple living there. They had food so Willy shot ‘em and we stayed. Willy got the idea of looking around and seeing who else around here had food. He said we would give them protection. We would come around to each place once a week and take whatever we could, keep milking them. We stopped two other places before here, found people, roughed them up a bit and then took their food.”
“Those two back there, they any smarter than you four? They have any experience at this sort of thing?”
“Yes, sir, they both been to prison. They’re mean, but I thought these guys were mean too. I didn’t see it coming; none of us seen it coming. One second we’re talking, then wham, everyone’s dead. I never seen nothin’ like it, and I don’t want to see nothin’ like it again.”
“What time are y’all expected back? What happens when you’re late?”
“We figured to be back by dark. No one talked about what to do if we didn’t come back, so I don’t know what they’ll do. Wait ‘til morning and go looking for us, I expect. They knew where we were headed.”
Roman asked, “Did you fellas scout this place out or just waltz in?”
“We didn’t scout anywhere. We just walked down roads looking for signs of life. This road looked like it headed back to the river and we thought there might be folks on the river bank. We thought we might find a cow if no people, but no, sir, we didn’t do no scoutin’.”
When he finished speaking, Roman shot him in the back of the head. Roman had never had any notion of turning an enemy loose; he would only sneak around and ambush him later. Only a fool would do that; never leave an enemy alive to come after you at his choosing of time and place. That would be suicide.
He put away the guns and the ammo he found on the men. Each had a wallet, and inside were driver’s licenses, credit cards, cash. All were from Texas but there was nothing remarkable about them—other than all of them had extensive tattoos. One at a time, Roman tied a rope to their ankles and dragged them into the river and watched them float off. Then he found Sarah and told her what had happened.
“I don’t know, Sarah. Something in me just snapped. Those cretins walked in like they owned the place. They looked at me like I was nothing, like I was already accounted for. They intended to take all our food. I shot them so fast they didn’t have time to blink. I thought I might feel bad, but so far I feel I killed snakes, nothing more. Tonight I’m going to their nest and kill the rest of them before they come after us again.”
Sarah gave Roman a long hard hug and told him, “Darling, this is a hard new world and you did the right thing, exactly the right thing. Even if you had been wrong, I would still be behind you one hundred percent—and I always will be—but you did right.” Roman found great comfort in her words, and in her soothing touch.
That evening Roman took the pump shotgun, the AK-47 and a garden wagon, and walked to the house the man had described. He reached the turn off onto the county road just after dark. Slowly and quietly he continued down the county road until he was close
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