FBR, Chapter Five, Scenes 3 and 4.

Foreign Body Reaction
Alan McNeill
Chapter 5 Scene 3.

“Five.”

“Five?”

Darlene leaned against the side of the truck and watched Mark. Ben stood near her, close enough to speak quietly.
“I called seven people. I felt like an idiot,” said Darlene. "Only five are coming, and I'm not really sure they meant it. They all thought I was nuts."

Ben understood. There hadn't been time to prepare for this. People needed time to digest, time to discuss.
“This is something we should have been discussing for a years before the flu hit. You did what you could,” said Ben.

“Just like you with your friend Jacob, right?”

Ben looked down, his foot scrubbing the dirt. “No, I've been having these discussions and what to do if scenarios for years with Jacob. I just couldn't convince him that something as innocuous sounding as bird flu was a big enough problem. He needs the comforts of normalcy, the city life, at least once in a while.”

“You mean Emily, right?”

“I'm not so sure it is Emily that is the problem, she's just convenient.”

Both watched Mark laying flat on a warm rock, scanning a valley below. They were thirty miles north of Grants Pass and west into the mountains. The Hellsgate area. They had stripped Darlene's Subaru and loaded the tents and supplies into the bed of Mark's truck. They were three hundred feet above the GPS coordinates that Ben had supplied for Darlene's friends. It was an hour past the time they had agreed on. No one had showed yet. Mark was watching the only road in and out of the valley below. They were on a road that had several campgrounds, but the road had been nearly abandoned when fuel prices climbed and campers had become rare.

The weather had surprised them all when it dawned unseasonably warm this morning. The gray late November winter seemed to have given way to an sun once again. If Ben could have forgotten what was going on up and down the west coast it would just been a pleasant day in the woods with friends.

Ben and Mark had unloaded supplies down below, enough for four or five days for three people. Whoever showed now, now that flu was in Grants Pass was assumed to be infected. Ben planned on keeping them comfortable and at a distance for longer than the incubation period. He had read that symptoms, coughing, sneezing, and scratchy eyes were demonstrated usually in forty eight to seventy two hours. If her friends showed no symptoms after four days they were probably alright. Ben would have preferred longer but they needed to get moved back away, deeper into the wilderness, farther from I-5. Though he hadn't discussed it yet with Mark, Ben's plan was to move towards the coast along the Rogue river.

They spent the next two hours taking turns watching the valley below and listening. Mark left several times and hiked down to check intersections for tracks. They ate, listened, watched and waited.

Darlene was slumped against one of the truck tires, her head leaning against her knees.

“We have to go,” said Ben.

Darlene shook her head slightly in agreement. "Not a one."

"Sorry," said Ben.

Ben offered his hand and she drew herself up and dusted her seat off. Mark came over the edge of the hilltop and shook his head negatively. Carefully they all checked to make sure they left nothing behind, no trace. Mark dusted out their footprints with an hazelnut branch.

They were loading up when Mark paused and looked at Ben. He listened and they could hear the distant crunch of gravel, followed by the sound of off two stroke and four stroke engines.

All three of them dropped to their knees and crawled out on the rock ledge, lay down and watched the scene below them.

Two four wheel drive trucks, one with a canopy, and two motorcycles pulled off the road below. They were only a few yards from where Mark had piled the camping equipment for the hoped for rendezvous. Two quad runners, both bright green slid to a stop behind the van.

“This will do,” followed by something unintelligible and then drunken laughter. Two of the men dismounted the bike and went to the back of the van. They pulled the hatch up. A man got out of one of the full sized pick ups and came around behind the van. The rear of the van was facing the rock promontory where Ben, Darlene and Mark lay, but the deep shadows inside the van didn't allow Ben to see inside.

Mark held up a finger to Ben and then handed him the binoculars. Ben took a minute to focus and could see two rolls of something in the back, one of them was squirming. The man from the truck was huge. He towered over others and his stomach hung over a thick leather belt. He had a biker's beard, and a bald head. The other doors of the second truck opened and several men got out holding machine pistols. Ben watched them spread out throughout the clearing.

The first lump from the van was pulled out and dumped to the ground. The fat man gestured at the two boys to unroll what was now clearly a dirty throw rug. They laughed and pulled the end up and a body rolled out and collapsed on the ground. Even from this far away, Ben could see blood on the man's head.

One of the group with the machine pistols shouted and pointed at Mark's cache. The tableau froze, and everyone moved over to inspect their discovery.

Darlene tapped Ben and gestured to be given the binoculars. Ben passed them to her. Ben had chosen this spot carefully and on the off chance there was sun today, he knew it would be from behind them.

Darlene focused and both Ben and Mark started at her quick intake of breath.

“Shit, oh my god, that's Benny on the ground. Oh fuck, he was one of my calls,” she said in a hoarse whisper.

“How many people where coming with him?”

“Three. I mean, three total. He has a sister that is staying with him and her daughter too. “

Mark tapped Ben again and pulled him towards him. Ben shook his head no, furiously. Darlene could see Mark's hands beseeching him, palms turned up.

“No.” Ben hissed.

Down on at the clearing, Benny was trying to get to his knees. He wiped futilely at his eyes and got to his knees. He struggled to stand using the rear bumper of the van and he leaned in, half collapsing trying to pull the second bundle out. He tore at duct tape that held the rug closed and managed to rip only a bit before the fat man had returned.

Benny's head slapped back as the giant's hand grabbed the hair on the nape of his neck and dragged him backwards. Benny fell to his knees and the man slapped him to the ground.

“Who stuff is that, asshole! Who were you meeting out here?”

Benny tried to see what he was talking about but the big man simply pushed him down to the ground with one foot on his chest. With his other hand he unrolled the second rug. The child rolled out limp. There was no sound. She wore only ripped panties, and the bruises on her white slim body were visible from the hill.

Darlene bit her lip and stifled a scream. “It's Jasper, the daughter. Oh my god, is she dead?” said Darlene her voice rising.

Ben shushed her, reaching over to silence her. When Ben turned back, Mark was gone. “Fuck!” said Ben in a whisper. Darlene looked and saw that Mark had left. She grabbed Ben.

“You can't let him do this alone.” Her hand dug into Ben's arm.

“Down below the sudden wailing of the young girl, rolled up the hill.”

“Look who's awake boys,” shouted the fat man.

“I told you a private party was what we needed.” The two boys left the pile they had been tearing apart and the two of the four men from the second truck we returning, their weapons ready but relaxed.

When Ben and Mark had decided on this rendezvous point for anyone of Darlene's people, they had chosen an area near Tin Can Campground opposite the to Galice very near the Rogue River. They were a rise south of the campground, looking down on it. Ben figured that if anyone who came could be comfortably quarantined in the campground for five days to see if any of them developed the flu. From here they would be able to go west in an arc that followed the Rogue River or south and loop back to Route 199 past Cave Junction and to California. Darlene's tale of soldiers on 199 gave the nod to running west.

Darlene rolled closer to Ben and repeated.
“You can't let Mark do down there alone!” she hissed.

“He shouldn't have gone down there at all,” snapped Ben, trying to keep his voice down.

“They'll kill him, we need him.”

“There will be many of these groups, many people will die, and I'm sorry that you know these people, but if they are infected, Mark is not only jeopardizing himself, but us too. They could be infected, they could kill him, or worse he will kill some of them. What will that do, these men will hunt us. Did you see the automatic weapons?

“Fuck Darlene, what we should do is get the truck out of here as quietly as possible while they're involved down there.

Darlene just stared at him. “But that isn't what we're going to do, is it?”

“Fuck!” said Ben. “We haven't even started to get out of this mess and already we're breaking every rule of common sense.”

“You know what we have to do then, if we start this you know what we have to do?”

“I know we have to get that girl, Jasper I think her name is, away from those men. That is all I know. If you where a parent you would no that too.”

“If Mark does that, they will track us. They have vastly superior automatic weapons and more than that. They are not the kind of people that would think that this was anything but fun. They have already slipped over to a different way of living. Have you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The men below in the campground are a certain type. A certain percentage of all populations are always controlled not by an internal belief in right and wrong, but rather by the rules of the civilization they are surrounded by. In prison there are rules, in cities cops and peer pressure control them. But in times of civil collapse, they loose their restraint, it freedom to destroy, take, stay drunk and drugged and to do whatever they want. For many of these people, that is terrorizing others, especially those they perceive a part of that world that controlled them.”

As Ben talked he had moved back from the edge of the rock ledge and to the truck parked in the shadows. He rummaged in the back of the flat bed, and found his Cache tube. Darlene followed, listening and watching.

“So if we are to join Mark in saving this girl, we may or may not live. But Mark decided that for us when he reacted as a 'normal' man in a normal world; last weeks world. And here I am, reacting the same way to my friend, who we need, and who is now part of our close people, our tribe for the next six months.

“Do you understand what we have to do now?”

Darlene opened her mouth to snap back at him, the obvious answer. But her breath caught in her chest. She had followed Ben's line of reasoning. She stared at Ben and realized what he meant. If they managed to save the girl and her uncle, They would be pursued. They could not afford or survive that pursuit.

Ben unrolled the Mexican blanket that cradled two long guns. Both were military surplus and thus quite inexpensive. Unlike sporting rifles they were heavy, ugly, and rugged. He handed her the Yugoslavian SKS that had been modified to accept AK47 clips. He slapped a 40 round banana clip into the bottom of the rifle. It had no scope, and was not really accurate above 150 yards even in skilled hands. Ben choose the other long gun, a 1944 Mosin Nagant that had a scope on a very ugly mount. It was long and accurate out to 400 yards with the scope.

Darlene accepted the lighter SKS with the clip. Ben put 5 stripper clips of Russian ammunition in his pockets and said.
“Ready.”

Darlene looked at him and said, “I don't know if I can do this?”

“Then stay here.”

“I can't.”

“You know what we have to do?”

“Kill them all.”

“Yes. Everyone.”

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Foreign Body Reaction
Alan McNeill
Chapter 5 Scene 4


"Have you fired a rifle like that before?"

"I've never even seen one of these. Doesn't look like the 30-30 lever I used for deer hunting," she said looking down at the rifle."

It is not full automatic, you get one bullet per pull of the trigger. The sights are pretty accurate. Just line up the front in the middle of the posts in the back, all even height, and whatever is out there about from here to the van down there will get hit. Even if you miss, the noise will keep them pinned down. I want you to work your way back down this road to that bar of gravel above the creek."

He brought her around and they crawled to the edge. "See it down to your right?" Ben asked.

"Yes," Darlene said softly. "I don't know if I can do this Ben.

"Then stay here. I can't help Mark if you're taken prisoner too, or killed. If you go down there you must do what we must do, or we leave here right now, they finish raping the girl, kill the man, kill the girl and probably kill Mark too somewhere in there. But we will be alive. I would guess it is what Mark knew we should do."

"I'm not leaving him and that poor girl to those animals," she hissed.

"Then use that anger or get the fuck out of the way."

Darlene,s face was red, her carefully coiffured hair was hanging in dirty strands. She said nothing, but got in a crouch and began working down the road, keeping out of sight.

Ben returned his attention to the scene below and the long Mosin. He used the primitive distance measurement and saw that the men at the cache were about 200 archins away. This measurement is an 18th century measurement of the pace of a Russian soldier. Ben had fired the Mosin long enough to get use to the strange distances. He knew an archin was about 28 inches.

The men who were clustered around the girl at the back of the van were a little closer. No one in that camp was watching anything but the girl, including the men who had been on the periphery with the automatic weapons, possibly machine pistols.

Ben folded his sweatshirt that he had picked up at the truck into a neat bundle and tried to do everything as he had always done at the range. He was pretty good out to 150 yards with the Mosin, but the men who where were still standing around the supply cache were a bit farther away than that. Ben laid out the ammunition clips to his left, and rested the birch wood stock of the long rifle over the folded sweatshirt. He laid perfectly flat on the still warm rock at a twenty degree angle to the gun and tried to remember the Finnish method of slapping the bolt open and closed without moving the rifle from his shoulder.

He brought the stock up to his cheek and tucked the rifle firmly against his shoulder. The Mosin slapped hard when it fired and it was very loud. He used the scope to search the campground for any sign of Mark. Then trying not to feel anything he began to assess danger and risk as he looked at each man. He could see the fat pig rutting at the teenager spread on the floor of the van, and the other men cheering him on, waiting their turn. Two men were in the van but he couldn't see them beyond the leader. His finger curled around the trigger of them Mosin and the lit reticule of the scope centered on the back of the fat man's head. The scope was only four power but he could see the sweat dripping down to the seemingly lifeless girl.

Ben took his eye away from the scope and searched again for Mark. He could see nothing which didn't surprise him. He looked to his right and saw Darlene was in position, the SKS held awkwardly in front of her, but pointing at the men around the van, but she was looking at him. He held one finger up, pausing her.

The four men with the machine pistols had been drawn into the on going rape, and now were all focused on it. Ben brought the crosshair off the fat man and shot the first man with the machine pistol through the ear. Without waiting to see him fall, he slapped the bolt open and closed chambering the second round. The men below were just turning to react and he shot the second one low in the neck, the blood spurting on the his fellow watchers. The third round took the third man with the machine pistol in the stomach as he was raising the gun, looking for the source of the fire. The fourth man had dove to the ground and rolled under the van, bringing his weapon out before him. The fat man backed up off of the girl and there was a snapping, buzzing sound. He swatted at his temple as if stung and yelled at his men to get to cover. He took one more step and was stung again. This time he sighed and crumpled to the ground.

Ben chambered the fourth round as the men scattered below. Suddenly the sound of the SKS began a low snap, drumming bullet after bullet towards the men nearest the cache. The men all hit the dirt seeking cover and Ben shot one after another as they lay down. He dared not shoot at the two men who were now under the van as the girl remained unconscious on the floor of the van and the two men deeper inside were out of sight.

Dirt exploded close to Ben's face followed by a sharp crack a millisecond later. Dirt and rock stung his face. He flinched back from the edge of the ledge. He rolled backwards and to the right grabbing only one five round clip from where he laid them. He reloaded his rifle, safely back from danger and rolled back into position.

He saw two of the men farthest behind cache drop their guns and run into the woods bordering the campground. Another ran for a motorcycle, and was frantically kick starting it when he began to shudder in time with the rhythmic pounding of the SKS below him. Darlene was simply shooting one round after another, every second, another bullet and she had found the range. The SKS was chewing him up. The man fell over slowly to the left and the motorcycle tank was ruptured in turn. The sweat smell of gas filled the clearing.

Suddenly the teenager slid out of the van and dropped limply to the ground near the fat man. She looked at him, noting the two small holes at his temples. There was hardly any blood. The men who where behind her in the van pushed another rolled carpet to the door in front of them and brought handguns to bear, using the carpet as a cover and a gun rest. Ben almost shoot right through the carpet but then remembered Darlene's comment that there were three people. Ben felt a cold heaviness come over him. He knew with certainity that he could not keep this up even a minute longer.

He felt a wave of nausea swept over him. He swallowed hard, and without further hesitation shot both of the men laying in the van through their lower backs. Having paralyzed them, he worked up each of their spines with one more shot each. The bolt slammed back, open on an empty chamber and Ben pushed the rifle away from him. He couldn't see now, the chips must of have cut him. He wiped his eyes, no blood. He face was running sweat and tears. He was effectively blind. He rolled to the side and retched again and again until there was nothing left in him.

The steady wack wack wack of the SKS finally stopped. There was an odd stillness to the forest. The moment was broken by scream from the forest that was cut off abruptly. Ben couldn't look back below, but he forced himself to his knees and began to stumble down the road toward Darlene. He realized that he had left his gun, but felt the familiar gouge of the pistol in his belt. He made it to Darlene. There was no blood around her. But she sat dazed behind the SKS semi auto rifle. Ben reached to pull her to her feet. She recoiled from him without a word. Her carefully applied makeup was running down her face.

Ben hesitated and then continued down to the clearing. He made his way towards the van when suddenly the right sleeve of his jacket fluttered and he felt stung. He realized he was currently deaf from the Mosin's report but he couldn't remember hearing it as he shot. The plucking at his clothing occurred again and he saw the man under the van taking carefully aim with the machine pistol, spraying a creeping line of exploding dirt geysers toward him. The gun snapped from the man's hands, and he had only a moment to register surprise as a hand with a heavy hunting knife reached around in front of him from under the van and cut his throat.

Mark rolled out of the truck, a 10-22 Ruger carbine over his shoulder, so small it appeared like a child's toy, a K-bar knife in his left hand. He walked among the men, not looking at Ben, but kicking their weapons away from them. Ben heard a gurgle and looked up to see Mark reach down and sever another man's throat.

Darlene pushed by Ben. She squatted and pulled the girl by the arm out of the tangle of bodies at the open end of the van and ten feet further before she cradled the limp form of the teenager to her. Ben slowly made his way to the last rug. He was afraid of what he might find, afraid that he might have shot through the rug. He cut the duct tape and the limp form of a woman in a halter top, shorts, bare feet and long black hair rolled out on the floor of the van. The long black hair was stuck to the right side of her head with caked blood. Not a bullet wound, she had been hit. Ben left her for a moment, and looked for water. The truck had several cases of water bottles in the back. Ben took several of them to Darlene, then cracked one open and poured it over the bloody temple of the woman. Her eyes flickered open for a moment, saw Ben, then closed again.

Ben lowered her head and kicked the bodies away from man he had first seen come out of the back of the van, the brother of the woman he thought. The man was still, limp, on forest floor. Ben turned him over to find a round neat hole where his right eye should have been. Ben felt nauseous again, swallowed hard and turned to the fat man. He rolled the leader over. A chromed forty five automatic lay beneath him. It had been fired, and looking again at the dead man, the size of the wound could only have been made by the forty five.

Ben pulled the brother gently away from the van and covered him with one of the rugs. The woman in the van was stirring now, getting up, calling, "Jasper," hoarsely.

A hand clamped firmly on Ben's shoulder. Ben spun and realized it was Mark. He raised his hand to strike Mark, and Mark stood still and waited for it. Ben's hand fluttered down. With that Ben collapsed. Mark stepped forward and caught Ben as he fell. He slid him over to Darlene and laid him down next to her and the girl. Darlene looked up, her eyes filled with tears.

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