Читать книгу Last Stand - Robert Ciancio - Страница 13

6

Charles Guntrom was a big man. He stood well over six feet tall and weighed nearly two hundred and fifty pounds but carrying the piece of shit that had tried to rape his daughter back to his barn was tough. Maybe he wasn’t as young as he used to be or as young as he thought he was. The stranger wasn’t a big guy, but he was stocky. He was about five foot ten and weighed maybe two hundred and fifty pounds.

Charles had lived on this farm his entire life. He had inherited it from his father, who got it from his father before him. His oldest son, Charlie Junior, had gone to Penn State University and majored in agriculture so he could take over the farm someday. That was until the blackout. Now he wasn’t sure what was going to happen. Being a cabbage farmer without modern necessities was going to be almost impossible, especially without the man power that would be needed to do it by hand. There were a hundred acres of cabbage to water, pick, and cultivate. Without a tractor and only two sons, a daughter and a wife to help with the labor, the farm would soon fall apart.

And besides, his second son, Justin, never wanted to be a farmer anyway. At sixteen, he was more interested in girls and cars. In fact, his real dream had been to go to automotive mechanic school to learn how to rebuild cars. Not just to fix cars but to rebuild the classics.

His twin sister, Jennifer, wasn’t really sure what she wanted to do. She was quiet and kept to herself, which Charles kind of liked because Jennifer was pretty and he had always been afraid that she would end up pregnant and married before her time. Just like him and his wife, Susan. She had been a great wife, but he always worried that Susan hadn’t been happy with her life or where she had ended up.

Once Charles got back to the barn, he and Charlie Junior used a piece of tow rope and strung the unconscious stranger up from a rafter in the barn. Charles looked over the equipment that the stranger was carrying. It looked like top-of-the-line stuff. The camos that the stranger was wearing looked expensive. His rifle was military grade, and the pistol looked as much like a work of art as it did a weapon. Charles guessed that the stranger had stolen his gear from somebody else. An escaped prisoner from the local prison couldn’t have gotten this type of gear without taking it from somebody else.

After the blackout, the prisoners at the State Correctional Facility Charlesville had been able to escape from custody and were wreaking havoc on the locals. Some prisoners had taken off and tried to get back home, or at least that’s what people suspected, however a large group of prisoners stayed, and were working their way from house to house taking whatever they wanted. Some citizens fought back, and many of them died for it. When the power went out, the prisoners were able to overrun the prison, killing a lot of the guards and confiscating their weapons. Now the escaped convicts were better armed than most of the citizens in the area.

The town police department had collapsed soon after the blackout. The officers that were on duty stayed for a while but soon realized nothing was coming back on and had taken off to go be with their own families. Who could blame them? Family came first. The only officer that stayed to try to keep any kind of order was Bill Collins. Charles and Bill were friends and often hunted together. Bill lived in town and had no immediate family, so he did what he could. But when the convicts moved in, there wasn’t much that one man could do against a large group of armed convicts, so he had retreated to the safety of Charles’s farm and was living in a spare room in the house.

“Charlie, go get Bill. We need to deal with this piece of shit.” He watched as Charlie ran through the double barn doors toward the house. He turned back to the stranger, who was still unconscious. There was something that didn’t feel right. He didn’t know what it was, but something was off.

Jennifer had run back to the house screaming that somebody tried to rape her, but when Charles tried to get any information from her, all she could do was point toward the power line. So he had gone down to check things out and caught this guy coming up the path. Charlie had inadvertently distracted the stranger, giving Charles the opportunity to knock him out with a shotgun butt to the head.

A couple of minutes later, Bill and Charlie walked into the barn. Charles would always laugh when he saw them together. Charlie took after his dad. He was tall and big. Bill was quite a bit smaller. At five foot nine and 170 pounds, he was considered normal, but beside Charlie, he looked like a hobbit. From what Charles had seen, his feet were almost as hairy.

“How’s Jennifer? She calmed down enough to answer any questions?” Charles asked, looking back at the stranger.

“No,” Bill said. “She’s still pretty worked up. Did you happen to see anybody else with this guy?” He pointed to the stranger hanging from the rafters.

Bill went over to the table where Charlie had laid the stranger’s gear. He picked up the AR and looked it over. It was a nice piece of hardware. He then picked up the 1911. He didn’t know a lot about 1911 pistols but saw on the slide that it was engraved with “Hunt Custom 1911 A-1.” He did know enough to know that if this pistol was a full custom, it was an expensive pistol, easily four grand.

“No,” Charles answered.

“Why?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. She kept mumbling stuff about guys. ‘Big guys, smelly guys, ugly guys,’ but she was hyperventilatin’, and I couldn’t get anything more out of ’er. Susan and Justin are with ’er now. Once she calms down, I’ll try again to get somethin’ from ’er.” He looked at the 1911 again. “This stuff’s a little too nice to be a convict’s gear, don’t ya think?” he asked, more to himself than anybody else. When he got no answer from himself or anybody else, he signaled toward the stranger and asked, “What are you gonna do with this guy?”

Charles looked at the stranger for a couple of minutes. What am I gonna do? “Well, let’s wake this piece of shit up and see if maybe we can’t get some answers from him.”