Home Coming (The Survivalist Book 10) by A. American (ebook reader .TXT) 📕

Umatilla and there used to be one in Eustis,” I replied.

“How is Eustis now?”

I shook my head. “Gone, for the most part.”

He sat back. “Still good to see people out like that. We never left the subdivision. There was nothing close you could walk to and paddling a boat into Lake Monroe was a hell of job and dangerous.”

Mom sat up at the comment, “We lost a friend who tried. He left one day to try and go to Sanford. He never came back. No one knows what happened to him.”

“You won’t have to worry about that sort of thing anymore,” Ted said over his shoulder.

Janet turned in her seat, “It’s mostly quiet around here now. These guys have pretty much dealt with everything that’s been thrown at them.”

“Quiet for now,” I sighed. “Subject to change without notice.”

“Ah, come on, Morgan,” Ted countered. “We’re finally on the downhill slide, man.”

“I’m not worried about the slide,” I said, “but what’s at the bottom of it.”

Ted looked back over his shoulder at Dad. “He always been like this?”

Dad smiled. “Reality is a bitch.”

“Yeah,” I replied, “and I live in Realville.”

“We all do,” Dad added.

As the trucks slowed and navigated around the burned-out wrecks in the road in front of the turn to the neighborhood, Dad asked, “What the hell happened here?”

“Just DHS wrecks. Some lessons gotta be learned the hard way,” Ted answered.

Mom looked at the rusted hulk of one of the MRAPs and asked, “You did this?”

“We did,” I replied.

“They were government trucks?” I nodded that they were. “What were they doing? I mean, why did you have to do that to them?”

“Because they were shooting the hell out of us. Trust me, they weren’t here offering relief.”

“No, they weren’t,” Ted added. Then he asked, “Did you tell them about the camp?”

“No, but there’s plenty of time for that,” I replied as we rolled down the road towards the bunker.

“We passed your house,” Mom said.

“We don’t live there anymore. Those same government helpers who manned the burned out trucks you just saw on the road up there trashed our house. We had to move.”

“Where do you live now?” Dad asked.

“Next to Danny. We all congregate at Danny’s house most of the time anyway, so it puts us closer.”

The two trucks parked at the end of Sarge’s street, near the bunker and we all climbed out. Sarge walked up to Dad and asked, “Well, what do you think?”

Dad looked at the bunker and the Guardsmen standing around it. “Things that bad?”

Sarge looked over his shoulder at the bunker, “Not anymore. We had a rough time for a bit. But I think that’s all behind us now.”

“Where are Mel and the girls?” Mom asked.

“Come on,” I said, “let’s walk down to the house.”

“Morgan, I’ll catch up later. I need to go check on our prisoner,” Sarge said.

“You need any help, boss?” Mike asked.

Sarge glowered at him. “Hell no, I don’t need your help!”

“You have a prisoner?” Mom asked.

I nodded. “It’s a Russian Colonel. We’re holding him until Eglin can send someone to get him.”

“You better hurry with that,” Wallner said. He was sitting in a chair under the tarp at the rear of the bunker. “Dalton kicked the shit out of him.”

“Why?” I asked.

He shrugged, “I wasn’t there. Just heard about it. I guess Ivan said something that made him mad. Bert said Dalton never said a word, just kicked the crap out of him.”

“He probably deserved it,” I said. “Either way, I really don’t care.”

We turned and started down the road towards the house. Mom and Dad were looking around and Mom asked, “How many people are here?”

“We have about seven houses occupied and many others available. So, you guys can choose the one you like. We’ve got around, thirty-ish, I think.”

“Between the National Guard guys that we have and us, plus the two prisoners, it adds up quick.”

“What exactly happened to your house?” Dad asked.

I told him the story of us getting tangled up with the DHS and how we were forced out and had to go live on the river for a while. How we then managed to overthrow the camp setup at the bombing range and were then able to move back.

“When we got back, we found they’d destroyed our house. Just ridiculous vandalism really. What bothered me the most was the fact that they knew where I lived. They didn’t bother any of the unoccupied houses. Did a number on Danny’s house too, but not as bad.”

“It’s hard to imagine that our government would do this kind of crap, considering what the country has been through,” Dad said.

“Oh, it was all for our own good of course. They were rounding people up and moving them to camps where they could get medical treatment, food and shelter. What they didn’t tell people was that it was Hotel California. You could check in, but you couldn’t check out. They were splitting up families; even in the camps, men were separated from women and kids. Naturally, this led to all manner of trouble, sex crimes committed by the staff, physical abuse. We finally had to do something.”

“So,” Mom started, “you and your friends just attacked the camp? Weren’t there a lot of government people there? How’d you do it?”

“Well, this little group is pretty skilled. We have some special forces types here and that is the sort of thing they did all over the world. Don’t get me wrong, it was tough. But we managed to succeed.” I looked at Dad and said, “You know what the craziest thing was? Some of the people locked up there were upset when we took it over and freed them. They didn’t know how to act when there wasn’t someone around making their decisions for them. It was nuts.”

“The evil you know versus the unknown,” Dad replied. “Once they adapted to the new conditions there, they resisted the change, even if it meant freedom.”

“Exactly. I couldn’t wrap my head around it.”

We were approaching my