It begins (Cumberland Saga)

Lightning was driving the small SUV and it was novel feeling. Effortlessly moving at 50 miles per hour felt as magical as riding on a flying carpet as the vehicle zoomed through the deep darkness shortly after midnight.

He had three reliable, fellow felons in the vehicle with him. Well, as reliable as felons can be. He knew they would drop the dime on him in a second if it gave them advantage. So the key was to make sure they always knew which side their bread was buttered on.

He had very briefly considered taking a couple meth-heads with him. This was a big operation. But meth-heads are very unreliable. No way in hell that was going to work out. For that matter, he wasn’t taking Techie-Dude either. The nerd had no sense and Lightning didn’t trust him.

It took him a few days to get his “boys” lined up. They became a lot more enthusiastic once they saw how well his cellphone-jammer worked. They became even more enthusiastic when he showed them “the product” he intended to pay them with.

He was packing the injectable meth in single-use condiment packages like the mustard packets the gas station had next to the hot-dogs. The single-use packages had taken eastern Tennessee by storm and were in high demand and commanded top-dollar. His skin-head buddies would have no problem turning them into cash and Lightning would be simultaneously growing his distribution network.

Lightning was the only one of the invaders to carry a cellphone. He didn’t want his muscle to know where his new manufacturing base was going to be.

Lightning followed the GPS to the location TD had programmed into the phone. The driveway entrance showed up exactly where it was supposed to be.

Lightning grunted and doused the headlights as he slowed. He slew the vehicle sideways after he had pulled in to take up as much of the drive as possible. No point in making it easy for the targets to escape in a vehicle. Not that he expected that to happen...but prison makes a person paranoid.

Davey started bitching as soon as they started walking. He had porked out as soon as he gotten out of prison. Stronger than a retard, but now carrying an extra fifty pounds of fat. “Ain’t nobody up there. Lookit that rock. Ain’t nobody been up this drive in fiffy years.”

Lightning was starting to have his own doubts. It seemed impossible that as many people lived up here as Techie-Dude said and they didn’t have a functional driveway.

About forty-yards past that jagged boulder, a pack of dogs erupted in frenzied barking. At least one of them was a beagle, a bark that Lightning remembered from the neighborhood where he grew up.

Fucking niggers and spics all had pit-bulls. Damned straight there were people up there. White people too!

***

Blain rolled out of bed and grabbed the small back-pack Sarah had put together and tossed it on the bed. “Grab Mary and head to the hoop-house” Blain said.

Lliam’s head popped into the doorway. He had gone to bed dressed and was already carrying his Springfield 87, .22. He was thrilled to have scored a scope in the Cove’s weapon upgrade.

“You know the plan. Hustle on over to Roger and Alice’s.

Sarah pulled on a wrap and slipped into her sandals. Then she gave him a quick, urgent kiss. “You be careful, hear!”

Then reaching out her hand to Mary’s, she said “Hush, child. They have work to do and they won’t be able to focus if we are here.” And then they were gone.

Blain slid into the faded, blue, mechanics overalls and slid his feet into a pair of battered running shoes. Then he slid a balaclava over his head. Reaching behind the bedroom door as he was on his way out, he pulled out the Mossberg pump shotgun. He have five rounds of double-ought in the tube magazine and another five rounds of bird-shot in his pocket.

He was out the front door less than ninety seconds after the dogs started baying. If you had asked him, he would have sworn it took him more than five minutes and he was frantic that he was late.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to go far. All of the firewood had been moved to the front of the house and a double-row had been stacked 36” high. Blain’s primary fighting position was behind the firewood.

Settling behind the wood, he dropped his last round of 00 into the open maw of the shotgun and rammed the bolt forward. The safety was taped forward into the firing position.

Looking out, he could clearly see the white, five-gallon buckets that Sig had put out to define Blain’s fields-of-fire. Blain was glad they had put water in them. They weren’t going anywhere.

He waited… 

***

Gregor rolled out of his cot fully clothed and with his shoes already tied.

He had gone to sleep with the door of his van cracked open and the door to the hoop-house propped open.

It was a windy night. Weather was blowing in but for now the broken clouds that were scudding across the sky let the quarter-moon’s light through every now-and-then. The slight bang and the rattle of the hoop-house door and pre-battle jitters had kept him awake for a while.

Gregor’s role was to be the rover. His shotgun was a Remington 870 with a magazine extension. They had only been able to find one box of buckshot in the Cove. Gregor was running alternate double-ought buckshot and slugs.

Before leaving the van, Gregor energized the glow-in-the-dark paint on the backside of the barrel’s front sight with a bright, LED flashlight. He took care to close his eyes for the five seconds he illuminated the sight. He was going to need his night vision. 

He started down the foot-path toward the public road.

***

Roger was out his back-door the same instant Blain was settling down into his hide.

There had been intense debate between Sig and Roger about their roles. Not only was Roger’s house closest to where the drive emerged from the woods, but it was the largest and most prosperous looking structure. It was almost a sure-thing that this where the invaders would hit.

Sig was worried that Roger’s bad back would slow him down and make him a liability. In the end, Roger quoted scripture, Nehemiah to be exact and Sig relented.

Roger was armed with a Remington 1100 semi-automatic. The semi-auto had less recoil, a significant factor given Roger’s infirmity, than a pump but it came at a cost of only holding three shells in the magazine.

Roger was serene and at peace. If he had to die defending his family and clan against the unGodly, he expected an easy passage to Heaven. And in the blink-an-eye, in Celestial Time, Alice would rejoin him and probably tell him what he should have done in his final minutes of life.

Sig ended up in the middle. He was not only defending his own home but was in a position to back-up either Roger or Blain.

Like Blain, he carried a Mossberg pump shotgun.

Copperhead Cove’s firearms were like its population of dogs. They were always changing. Most of them came from neighbors who moved away or died. They were free or very heavily discounted. 

A sick neighbor could always count on a pan of lasagna or macaroni-and-cheese from the Cove. Or, if somebody had to go to town and needed a warm body to sit with an ailing spouse the Danube Swabians were always able to find a person and they never took payment. Finally, they were notoriously closed-mouth. They did not ask personal questions and never stuck their noses' into other’s business. 

Consequently, the guns of Copperhead Cove were representative of what most neighbors, common working people, had owned and used on a daily basis fifty years ago. The selection was not driven by fashion or fads but by what had endured due to their inherent durability, functionality and versatility.

Sig worried. He worried about all of the ways things could go sideways. He was almost regretting the five minutes of warning...it was that much more time to worry.

Three houses beside the loop at the end of the drive. Three defenders. Each defending their own homes.