Page 20 of So Far Gone
“God no,” Chuck said. “I’ve never had to fire my weapon on duty. But I know what to do if it comes to that. Now, here’s what
you do if someone is wearing a vest. You aim just below their belly fat, to one side or the other. Shoot him in his front
pocket. Left or right, doesn’t matter, but you want to hit the torso, the hip.”
“If you haven’t shot anyone, how do you know this?”
Chuck just kept talking. “Shoot a man below the waist and the target is bigger, less mobile. The head flails and flops, but
the torso is the last thing to move. You hit a man in the hip, you’ll drop him every time. Got it?”
Kinnick shook his head. “I really don’t—”
“Also”—Chuck’s voice got lower—“the veins are paper thin in the legs. Bleeding is intense. You hit the femoral artery? It’s
lights out.” Chuck was behind Kinnick, talking low in his ear as Rhys stood like a tripod, pointing the gun at the fender
of the truck, his hands sweaty and shaking slightly. “Lights. Out.” It was quiet a moment and then Chuck’s voice got cheerier.
“Any questions?”
The high note seemed so insane that Kinnick could only laugh. Any questions? How about: What the hell? White Nationalist goons stealing children from church parking lots? Rural sheriffs telling him to go pound sand? A manic
ex-cop showing him how to shoot people in the front pocket? Was this just how people behaved now? Is this what the world had
come to? Seven years in the woods only to emerge and find everything had gotten crazier?
“It’s gonna be fine,” Chuck said. “If it comes to it, just think of them as raccoons.”
“Raccoons,” Kinnick said, and he pictured those remorseless creatures, their dirty little hands, their unblinking eyes, shoving tiny pieces of pink Hostess Snoballs into their greedy mouths; it was harder, though, imagining them driving away with his grandchildren.
Chuck patted his shoulder. “You got this, John Wick. Now, put the gun back in its case and let’s go get your grandkids.”
Rhys opened the case and put the magazine in, then settled the black handgun back in its little nook. “Who’s John Wick?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Chuck said.
***
The signs began to appear the minute they left the highway. no trespassing , private property, and beware of dog were practically native plants up here, but these handwritten signs, leading uphill toward the Rampart, took on a more insistent,
ominous, and misspelled tone. TURN BACK NOW! TRESSPASSERS WILL BE DEALT WITH! BOW BEFORE THY VENGEFULL GOD! SOVEREIGN ARMED
CITIZENS AHEAD! And one large sign at the open gate of a barbed wire fence, which Chuck had to slow down to read: COMMYS,
LIBERALS, FEDS, SORROS FBI, AND ALL WHO REJECT THE LORD AND HIS TEACHINGS—STAY OUT!
“I don’t see retired cops or shitty grandparents on that list,” Chuck said, “so, I guess we’re good.” These were the first
words either of them had spoken since they’d turned down this unmarked road, which quickly devolved into two tracks in the
forest, little pine sprigs scraping on the underside of Chuck’s pickup.
He eased the truck through the first open gate, feeling a rising buzz of adrenaline. “Here we go...” God, how he missed
this feeling—and something else that Chuck rarely felt in civilian life: a sense of purpose. He hadn’t always felt it as a
cop, of course. Some days the job was like any job, filing paperwork, going to training sessions, spending an hour on the
phone with HR trying to figure out what happened to your dental benefits.
But four or five times a year, some part of being a cop inspired him, fired up his adrenaline, and, occasionally, moved him to tears.
His first month in a patrol car, Chuck had broken up a party in a vacant field next to an old rail yard. It was a gathering
of the lowest of lowlifes, greasy street people drinking fortified wine and huffing old paint cans at a hobo camp amid the
tall grass and railroad ties just east of downtown. When Chuck scattered the skank partiers, he found one person sitting on
the ground in front of a smoldering campfire. It was a kid: ratty hair, jagged teeth, brown hooded sweatshirt. Maybe nine
or ten.
Chuck asked: “Did one of your parents bring you here?”
The kid just stared.
“How old are you?”
The kid stared.
“You don’t know how old you are, or you don’t want to say?”
Kid stared.
Chuck drove him to the cop shop and waited for Child Protective Services. He got the kid a Coke, and they sat in the foyer
while he tried to talk to the boy. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll get you some Cheetos, too, if you’ll tell me your name. Where
you live.” Nothing. The kid simply stared and sipped his soda. Chuck bought the Cheetos anyway.
Eventually, a caseworker from CPS showed up, took one look at the kid, and started signing with her hands.
When they stood to leave, the deaf kid gave Chuck Littlefield a hug around the waist and wouldn’t let go. He smelled like
sweat and shit and all the unfairness in the world.
After they were gone, Chuck went to the bathroom and wept. The job was like that. You could see a family of five torn apart
in a car accident—blood and body parts everywhere—and not so much as flinch. Make jokes about it later, even. Then some small,
seemingly random thing would shiv you—like a deaf kid left alone at a homeless encampment—and you’d feel it pierce and scrape
all the way to your bones.
That’s what today felt like for Chuck, seeing Lucy, and hearing her old boyfriend tell his story.
He’d started out suspicious of Lucy’s ex, and Chuck didn’t quite get this whole escape-to-the-woods business.
He could see someplace like Cancun, or Vegas, but to go live in a cabin in the middle of nowhere?
Why? But then Kinnick used that word extinct , and something had clicked for Chuck.
When he got sent to Property Crimes, and they pushed him into retirement, Chuck had
more than once imagined himself as an old bull, worn down by his battles, kicked out of the herd and sent off to die. In a
way, he supposed, Kinnick had done the honorable thing in that situation: going out into the woods alone after you were no
longer wanted. But the thought of it filled Chuck with deep sadness. His father had always told him that to be a man was to
have responsibilities beyond yourself—to protect those weaker than you, to stand up for what was right. All cop-cynicism aside,
for twenty-five years, he’d tried to do that (especially when overtime pay was involved). But then, to be suddenly told your
services were simply no longer needed? That your kind wasn’t wanted anymore? That shit was heartbreaking.
And just imagine, like Kinnick, finding yourself looking out at your front porch and not recognizing your own grandchildren! That was the ghost of Christmas future for Chuck, who was ten years younger than Kinnick, and had
no grandkids yet, but whose children had been poisoned by his bitter ex-wife and spoke to him maybe twice a year. No, he could
imagine the same thing happening to him.
All of that explained why he had made what was probably a rash decision: driving straight into the Church of the Blessed Fire’s
Idaho stronghold, where the Army of Losers trained for the upcoming holy war against immigrants or the UN or Michelle Obama
or whoever the hell they were afraid of (nothing pissed him off more than paranoia; he could never understand these big tough
guys being so scared of their own shadows).
The truck eased out of the woods into a clearing below a small hill.
There were stumps everywhere, every tree on the hillside, within a hundred yards of the compound, having been cleared; Chuck assumed this was so invading government agents, or Canadian troops, or space aliens, or whomever couldn’t take cover behind trees.
The Rampart compound itself sat at the top of this hill, and was surrounded by a tall, palisade fence—vertical wood posts of varying heights and widths lashed and staked into the ground.
It was the sort of fence that might’ve surrounded an old cavalry fort.
More signs were nailed to the fence: FEAR THEE THY LORD THY GOD and SEND FOURTH LIGHTNING AND SCATTER THINE ENEMY and BULLSHEVIK-FREE ZONE.
The driveway wound around the palisade fence to a second gate, a swinging eight-foot-high livestock gate, which had also been
left open.
“You think they’re expecting us?” Chuck asked. He looked over. Kinnick was pale, and Chuck felt another wave of sympathy for
Lucy’s old boyfriend. “Hey, Rhys, if you’re not up for this—”
“No,” Kinnick said quickly, and then, after a breath, “No, let’s do it.” He turned, his face grim determination. “I want to
get them out of there.”
“Okay.” Chuck idled the truck just below the gate. “Listen. Don’t worry. I’ve been dealing with asshats like this for thirty
years. These guys are like barking dogs on chains. They always back down when you get in their faces. Just remember, this
is just a bunch of cement mixers and dishwashers who come out to the woods to play Call of Duty .”
“I’m good,” Kinnick said. “Let’s go.”
Inside the gate were four buildings: a main clapboard house, an upside-down American flag flapping from its back porch; a
small white chapel; a red barn with An Appeal to Heaven flag; and what Chuck recognized as the planked bunkhouse, where the
Army of Losers slept during overnight drills, or when their mothers wouldn’t let them back into the basements where they lived.
There were a bunch of broken-down vehicles and farm equipment, and angle-parked next to the bunkhouse, three pickup trucks, a Toyota Tercel, and a motorcycle. Chuck parked between the house and the chapel. He turned the truck off. “Wait here,” he told Kinnick.
“And the thing in the glove box?” Rhys said, his voice nervous and high. He couldn’t even say the word gun .
“The box is unlocked,” Chuck said. “But don’t worry about it. And don’t do anything unless I tell you to do something.”
“Okay. Is there a signal, or—”