Ash: Rise of the Republic by Campbell Paul Young Page A

up. Clint, I’ll be over in a bit with the tractor. “
    The meeting adjourned, people donned their
protective gear and filtered out into the swirling grey morning.
Deb and I straightened up a bit and then headed home ourselves. We
were nearly through removing our makeshift ash suits when there was
a hammering on the door. I reached for the knob as it exploded in
toward me. Richard Werner’s ugly bulk stood framed in the doorway,
lowering his leg from the kick that had sprung the door open. His
son was a few feet behind, sneering sullenly.
    He pushed into the room without a word. The
two of us backed away quickly, unsure of his intentions. Moving
surprisingly quickly, he thumped me heavily in the gut, folding me
over. Deb screamed and went for the rifle on the table, forgetting
the pistol on her hip. He reached behind him and produced his own
pistol from his waistband, leveling it at her and growling, “Stop
right there, bitch.”
    “Ok college boy,” he turned back to me,
“I’ve decided I ain’t participatin in yer little commune. Since
everybody else is playin along, I guess I better find somewheres
else to go. I’m thinkin I might need some supplies, and somethin to
haul them in. You and yer bitch wife are gonna get out there and
load all that shit back in that truck so I can get on my way. If
yer not interested in helpin, I can just as easily shoot you both
right here and take it myself.”
    Still bent double, gasping, I stalled for
time, “Why don’t you put the gun down and we can talk about this.
Do you really want to kill two people in front of your son? Look,
you don’t need to leave. If you’re short on supplies you don’t have
to be embarrassed. We can help you, just be reasonable.”
    “Didn’t you hear my Daddy?” snarled his son,
“He said to pack up that fuckin truck or he’s gonna shoot you,
faggot!”
    Werner chuckled at the outburst and moved
closer to Deb. Without warning he whipped her in the face with his
pistol barrel, knocking her down and drawing blood.
    “Maybe I’ll fuck your wife in front of you
before I kill you,” he said, looking back at me, “that is unless
you’ve decided to get to work?”
    Without warning, Tracy, who had slept late
that morning and skipped the meeting, wheeled around the corner and
fired her twelve-gauge from the hip with a scream. The buck shot,
fired at such close range, tore a ragged hole in the big man’s gut.
His son, close behind him, flew backwards and slammed into the
wall, covered in his father’s viscera. Something, either one of the
lead pellets or a piece of bone, had torn off the top of his left
ear and peeled back most of his scalp in the process. He lay there,
stunned and bleeding, while the three of us watched his father
crumple to the ground.
    “I’m BLIND, I’m BLIND!” screamed the boy
suddenly, blood pouring into his eyes.
    Tracy squeaked in dismay and rushed over to
him.
    “I’m so sorry baby, I didn’t see you behind
him,” she began to cry, tears welled up.
    I handed her a towel from the kitchen and
she pressed it to his torn scalp. I looked at Deb, we were both in
a haze, unsure what to do. The little bastard had just finished
urging his father to kill us, but now he was just a young boy
bleeding and crying in our living room. Deb shook it off first.
    “Tracy, pick him up carefully, we’ll take
him to Mrs. Borger, maybe she can sew him up.” She turned to me and
waved at the twitching pile of dead rapist in the center of the
room. “Can you clean that up?”
    ****
    Once Clint and Mike helped me drag Werner’s body into
the driveway and cover it with a tarp, we hitched the tractor up to
Clint’s semi-trailer and tugged it up the hill to the nearest
highway entrance. It blocked most of the space between the stone
perimeter walls on either side. We borrowed an SUV from one of the
empty houses to plug the remaining gap.
    We then headed to the second entrance to
check on the construction of the new gate. Scott was