Wednesday at 2:40 p.m.
Again, sirens wailed in the distance, this time apparently headed toward the Community. It sounded like police were coming along both routes, from the northeast at Great Vista Boulevard and from the south at Whiskey Road. Those on the southerly route would need one of the SPD’s new four-wheeled Humvee special patrol vehicles to get around the wrecked tractor-trailer.
****
Main Battlefront
Before any law enforcement personnel arrived, Gary and Steve had neutralized almost every enemy. The three gang leaders were down and surrounded, but had not yet been stripped of their weapons.
Only one other thug, hauler D15, remained standing when the Warriors neared the barricade. Wade fired two more .45 slugs into the air; then he grabbed an especially solid potato and, from about fifty feet away, hurled it as hard as he could. It hit the large thug right between his shoulder blades. His arms dropped first, then he seemed to try turning around, obviously curious at what type of brick had just struck him. Then his legs just melted and he collapsed to the unyielding street.
Another big cheer from the barricade and Wade held up his hands like a character in a gladiator movie. Wade had a much bigger grin, however. But no gladiator skirt. Or sword.
The barricaders broke ranks and started advancing toward the downed invaders. Pete tried to hold them back, partly for safety’s sake, but also as standard military discipline. However, he quickly realized it was fruitless and just let them go. Pete himself stayed behind for a moment, looking at his line. It had held! They’d successfully defended their homes! It seemed like an event which needed more recognition than the rather common whooping and hollering which followed Wade’s powerful potato fastball.
Defeated leader Foss was fuming; despite his careful planning, nothing had worked properly. It was clearly the fault of Dante and Herve.
In his final moment of fading logistical clarity, Foss methodically accounted for his gang’s extensive casualties — many at the hands of hobbling, nearly-blind geriatrics and a few women of varied ages. Four haulers had not been seen lately and were apparently put out of commission by one of the flanking forces. Two men had bullet wounds: a loader was shot in his forearm and a driver hit in his shoulder. The little kid ran away on foot and the runner was knocked out by a flying orange. One loader got a karate chop to his neck and another was presumably unconscious in a garage. One hauler had cracked ribs and another was practically impaled by a rock-hard potato. One driver was whacked on the head and another blacked-out from a choke hold. The gang’s two lookouts had fared the best: both presumably escaped in the pickup at some point. The funny thing was, Foss had forgotten all their numbers!
That was sixteen men down or missing, leaving three able bodies. Therefore, the remaining gangster force still un-subdued was: Foss, Herve, and Dante. Or, as the barricaders had designated them: Baldy, Chico, and Toady.
As most of the barricaders gathered around, some of the newly downed aggressors began stirring again. At that point, however, none had weapons in their hands.
Toady/Dante started to get up and presumably would have attempted escape. Diane smacked his head with her hoe handle. Some nearby defenders clapped with approval.
Chico/Herve smarted off about the indignity of being defeated by old men and females. Ellie poked him hard in the belly with her bat. He collapsed with a loud whoosh of exhaled air.
Foss was squalling about his rights being violated, claiming he was denied due process, and generally spouting off various expletives.
Irene, who’d spent the entire barricade time with a spiked Springfield and occasionally yelling “Bang”, had long since reached her limit. She grabbed the pistol from Kelly’s hand and shot Baldy at point blank range.
A large yellow blot formed in the middle of his stomach and Foss groaned horribly as his breath was knocked out.
Wade winced on behalf of the gangster. “Ooh. That’s gonna bruise real good.”
“Irene, it’s a good thing you knew that wasn’t your husband’s real .45.” Kelly gave her some space.
“Actually I thought that was Pete’s old gun.” Irene handed the paintball pistol back to Kelly and walked away. There was a hint of bounce in her step.
Wade took the recreational gun from Kelly’s hand. “That paint thing ain’t near as heavy as a real .45, not by half. You think she was kidding?”
“Hard to say, Wade.” Kelly thought for a moment. “That punk did mess up her luncheon. And women in their eighties really hate their meal plans being ruined.”
Foss and his grand logistical operation were utterly defeated, but it had not completely sunk in yet. Still on the pavement, he began crawling towards his 9 mm pistol, which had skidded beneath the largest truck.
Ellie approached quickly. “Better not, Baldy.”
The exasperated Foss looked up as Ellie waggled her bat like clean-up hitter for the Cincinnati Reds.
“I’ve busted up thicker skulls and bigger brains than yer’s. But I don’t think I ever smashed a noggin as Bless George ugly as yer skint melon.” Ellie waggled the bat again and took a slow practice swing. “Go ahead, you polecat. I’m all warmed up.”
Chet was close enough to intercede, but looked like he’d just as soon watch her swing away. However, he pointed his unloaded, bayonet-tipped Garand at the gang leader on his belly.
“Blitz! Blitz! Blitz!” Foss just collapsed to the macadam.
Out of nowhere, Trooper Fred Lee Means appeared, quite winded, without saying a word. Giving Ellie and her lethal bat a wide berth, he squatted near the big truck to retrieve Baldy’s pistol. Means released the magazine and cleared the chamber, leaving it open, with the slide back and the naked barrel sleeve poking out. “Would you really have smacked him, Ellie?”
“You Bless George right I would’ve.” Ellie rested the bat’s big end on top of her shoe and twirled the handle knob slowly. “Sometimes it takes a nice, hard whack on the noggin to get somebody’s full attention.”
Means also gathered up the other nearby firearms dropped by the criminals.
Melvin finally limped his way from Leo’s garage to the ad hoc assembly point in front of the barricade. A city police sedan arrived from the north access and two officers hustled out, weapons drawn. The anxious policemen ordered everyone, including the women with bats and garden tools, to drop their weapons.
The barricaders all looked back at Pete, as he approached the gathering. His nod signaled for everyone to comply. Chet flipped over his M-1 and drove the bayonet deep into the ground just beyond the curb and slightly east of Art’s condo, where the largest truck had been stopped. The inverted rifle stuck straight up as though waiting for a helmet to be placed on top of its butt plate.
The other men with Garands — Isaiah, Leo, Herb, and Stanley — laid them carefully on the grass near Chet’s vertical rifle and stood silently. It took Melvin slightly longer due to his bloody toe. Irene put her Springfield in that same row and Pete lovingly did the same with his deer rifle. Art carefully placed the over/under shotgun; Norm laid down Isaiah’s revolver.
Bernie was still trudging down the street with the broken-open Long Tom slung over his shoulder by a bathrobe belt. His walker wheels squeaked and scraped on the pavement as he arrived. With considerable difficulty, he un-looped the sling, closed the breech with a loud clank, and laid the enormous shotgun in the grass near the other firearms. About that time the watch alarm in his pants pocket went off again and the second policeman hurriedly re-aimed his own weapon.
After anxious looks and a hurried, confusing explanation, both officers tentatively reholstered their weapons and promptly confiscated Bernie’s watch.
Diane dropped her hoe to the curb.
Ashley thought relinquishing their garden implements was absurd, but she let her shovel fall against the curb. “Whatever.”
Kelly had her hands full. She put her rake on the curb and laid the paintball pistol on the grass near the other weapons, but kept the spotting scope in one hand and air horn in the other. Police are trained to assume everything could be a weapon, so an officer motioned for her to drop the other two items as well. She did, but added a dramatic sigh. The only implement not confiscated was Earl’s sprayer-wand, still hooked to the hoses.
Ellie was the last defender to drop her weapons: the Garand with no bolt and her beloved Louisville Slugger. She told the officer if anything happened to her favorite bat that she’d come looking for him, personally… and she knew his momma.
He appeared sufficiently worried.
Means turned over all the criminals’ weapons he’d gathered to one of the city policeman presently on the scene. Then the trooper headed back to his own vehicle in a quick march.
Soon, additional city police arrived in two more squad cars from the north and one of the new Humvee special unit vehicles from the south. They quickly had cuffs on all the visible criminals, including the three gangster leaders. One of the officers called for paddy wagons to come in from the north.
“Hey, you cops gotta get us out of here. I demand police protection.” Dante watched too much television. “These old buzzards tried to kill us!”
“Maybe we ought to turn ‘em loose on you.” The officer winked to a colleague. “Teach you a good lesson.”
Ellie walked by at that moment. “Yeah. Don’t mess with no seniors.”
In the meantime a huge wrecker had arrived and already cleared the trailer of the ditched eighteen-wheeler so other vehicles could get by. Trooper Means drove his cruiser back to Placid Lane and parked not far from the bulldozer and Herb’s goat truck.
Somewhat out of breath, Means again reached the barricade and Herve tried to get his attention. “Hey, big guy cop. Listen a second, man. We was just… it was self-defense. We was just walking up this road here and they started shooting at us!”
“Uh huh. Well, which one of those desperados took the first shot?” Means pictured Bernie leaning on his walker with the enormous ancient shotgun, Chet with the rusty bayonet on his M-1, plus Kelly and others with garden tools. “So who did the first shooting?”
Herve pointed to Earl, who was crouched at his big Cadillac already trying to count all the bullet holes. The sprayer-wand was on the ground beside him, still linked to the garden hose.
“That grandpa didn’t even have a gun, punk.”
“But he shot me, man. Right in the face!” Herve pointed as though someone might not understand his reference.
“You want a paramedic? I don’t see any wounds.”
“He sprayed me, man!”
Means chuckled slightly. “You’re squalling about an old man with a garden sprayer?”
“But it was pee, man!”
Means called over the Somerset police sergeant who was ranking officer on scene. “Say, Rodney, y’all got any ordinance about peeing on a perpetrator inside the city limits?”
“Huh?” Sergeant Rodney looked where Fred Lee pointed — at Earl and his sprayer. “If all he did was spray urine on you, consider yourself lucky. One of the other defenders just told me when they ran out of live ammo they would’ve started shootin’ ten penny nails.”
Herve momentarily forgot about his dousing. “Nails? Hey, man, who are these people?”
“Shooting nails?” Means shook his head. “I think that’s just an urban myth.”
Rodney replied, “No, Fred Lee. He swore that his neighbor swore that he knew somebody in ‘Nam who shot nails from a military rifle.”
“Well, I’ve heard of stranger things. But it’d ruin the bore.” Means turned again to Herve. “Okay, punk, you hear that? You could’ve gotten a face full of nails. So shut up and wait ‘til an arresting officer Mirandizes you.”
“Hey, man, I don’t want no Mirandizing. I’m still sore from the last time they checked me.”
Foss was in handcuffs, but he kicked Herve angrily. “He ain’t talking about body cavities, you moron. He’s gonna read your rights.”
“Yeah, I got rights, man.”
“Just shut your blitzin’ mouth. Don’t say nothin’. All this baloney is just circumspectile.” Foss considered that he possessed some circumstantial legal knowledge.
Means raised his eyebrows as he looked at the three loaded trucks, a variety of semiautomatic firearms, and scores of shell casings all over the street.
“Hey, man, I don’t even have a gun.” Herve tried a new tack.
“What about that one over there on the grass?” Means pointed to a pistol he had evidently missed before.
“Never seen it, man.”
“Well, the GPR test will settle that question.”
“Don’t want no test, man. I just want my rights!”
“Like I said.” Means sighed heavily. “Right now, you got a right to shut up.”
For reasons not clear to anyone but themselves, two other policemen had segregated seven of the eight men in the flanking task forces and kept them away from the sixteen defenders stationed at the barricade. Wade somehow slipped through their net after relinquishing Pete’s army pistol rig and doing some very fast talking to the officer he knew. Mitch, Roger, Gary, and Steve were all relieved of their weapons by the other policeman standing quite near Wade’s golf cart. Both officers had lots of questions and needed time to sort out who was who.
Joe didn’t have a weapon. Neither did the look-alike brothers, after Elmer flung away the tire iron when the sirens got closer. Or was that Ralph? The elderly siblings were released to rejoin the people at the barricade, but Joe was held with the other task force members for further questioning. No explanation why.
After the nearby officer moved away slightly, Wade returned to his buggy and arrayed several shop towels over some of the more provocative-looking tools, equipment, inventions, and explosives.
Means spoke with officers in both groups and managed to convince them that he would safely take all the defenders’ firearms into his personal custody. The policemen were quite reluctant at first, but when Means explained the rigid federal inventory requirements for vintage Garands assigned to American Legion posts, the officers murmured, nodded, and let the big trooper sign for everything taken from the defenders. Sergeant Rodney, who was busy diagramming the barricade for his report, gave his okay.
The Somerset police kept the gangsters’ weapons, of course. It was a nice haul and would make an eye-catching photo for the paper: three AK-47s, one Uzi knock-off made in Taiwan, and several 9 mm pistols. Missing from that inventory were the 10 mm and .380 liberated by Gary and Steve respectively. Since those two had ended up in the pile of defenders’ weapons, they went along with Trooper Means.
Elmer and Ralph helped Means load all the defenders’ firearms, plus Ellie’s bat and Wade’s air horn, into the trunk of his cruiser farther up the hill. It took two trips. Then they collected the garden tools and Earl’s sprayer and left them at Pete’s garage.
Bernie’s watch never resurfaced.
The newly arrived emergency medical team checked, cleaned, and re-bandaged Melvin’s toe and gave him a tetanus shot. They cleaned the ricochet gouge below Kelly’s collar bone and applied an over-sized Band-Aid. EMT technicians also treated the minor injuries sustained by the gangsters. An ambulance arrived shortly and parked beside the EMT vehicle. Both felons with gunshot wounds were stabilized and rushed over to the hospital’s ER at light seven. They were also under arrest, of course.
Nobody else was going anywhere for a good while; everyone had to be questioned on the scene. As the city police began to comprehend the rather fantastic events which had actually happened, they stopped looking so harshly at the defenders. Once the complete picture emerged, law enforcement finally focused their efforts solely on the perpetrators. Immediately, Irene brought out sandwiches and iced tea for the officers while Ashley set up a card table and folding chairs in the shade between two of the duplexes.
None of the Community residents who’d taken refuge at the central complex had returned yet. After all, the big drill was still on and everybody had to be accounted for.
Chet saw Fred Lee walking back down the hill from his cruiser, where all the friendly firearms were now secured in his trunk. He approached to find out when and how they’d get their guns back.
Fred Lee spoke as quietly as possible while still allowing Chet to hear. “Just wait ‘til the city police haul off the rest of those perps. I’ll record all the serial numbers and let everybody sign for theirs.”
“You going to let Pete have all seven Garands? He’s the official custodian.”
“I understand the process. None of these weapons can leave the armory without being properly signed out.” The trooper nodded. “No problem, Pop. You’ll get your Legion rifles. Everybody here gets their own firearms back.”
That’s just what Chet wanted to hear, but he was puzzled. “You going to be in trouble letting us have our guns?”
“I put them all in my name. If the investigation needs them, which I doubt, I’ll contact you.”
The big trooper went back to his cruiser for some paperwork.
****
In the hullabaloo of disarming criminals and defenders, and trying to sort out the scarcely believable conflagration in this formerly quiet retirement neighborhood, there were still two enemy casualties who’d been practically forgotten.
Fairly early in the conflict, runner H9 was hit by one of Wade’s Vegge-zilla oranges and had been unconscious on the ground in front of Frank’s condo. For reasons nobody could satisfactorily explain, no officer had cuffed the Hispanic runner yet. Maybe he was overlooked because he’d been dragged into the shade beneath a small tree. Or perhaps the officers saw ambulance technicians dealing with the two gunshot wounds and assumed the other prone man also went to ER. Or maybe H9 was simply forgotten, pure and simple.
Loader H5 had been struck by numerous falling boxes — some presumably quite heavy — in the corner of Art’s garage. That white thug had also been unconscious, or so everyone thought. The police had never even seen him and none of the defenders remembered to mention him. Out of sight, out of mind.
But H9 and H5 were apparently wilier than they appeared, for both had regained consciousness a few minutes previously and each just lay low, waiting on an opportunity to escape. Separately, they assessed the developing situation and, within a few moments of each other, got up and started running for their lives. The purple bandanas in their back pockets flapped as they scampered between the duplexes — loader H5 to the west of Art’s condo and runner H9 to the east of Frank’s.
Shortly after settling the firearms access issue, Chet happened to be near Herb’s truck. It took the old man merely three seconds to release the rear gate’s catch, be certain he wasn’t wearing purple, and then nonchalantly step to the side. What goat?
Billie had been waiting all afternoon for this moment.
The two escaping thugs immediately realized their getaway was each man for himself and began to stumble across the uneven terrain of the construction area behind the north row of Placid’s duplexes.
Anyone who’s ever flushed rabbits knows that they almost always go separate directions even if they sometimes later cross paths briefly in their attempt to scamper for safety. However, stupid gangsters with bandanas in their rear pockets tend to run in pairs once they get around the two duplexes which initially separated them. Such proximity makes it much easier for an irate goat with a perverse purple fetish to chase them down.
Had the intense and incredibly fast goat not been in hot pursuit, perhaps Gary or Steve would have given chase. But no Marauders were needed for this patrol.
H5’s churning legs got tangled by his extremely low-riding britches; he tripped and fell to the cratered ground where his chin hit a large rock. He must have had a glass jaw, because he was out again, though not for very long.
The goat passed him by and went for the man still running. H9 either heard or saw the horned animal right behind him and possibly figured he could outmaneuver this barnyard banzai by zigzagging. Well, it turns out goats practically invented the zigzag. A furious, agile Billie lowered his horns and butted H9 about seven feet forward into a pile of dirt.
There are divided opinions on whether to play dead when pursued by grizzly bears, hoop snakes, or other dangerous wildlife. But few experts have bothered to study whether frustrated, violent goats prefer their victims moving or limp. With his face in the dirt mound, H9 certainly didn’t know.
For his part, Billie didn’t seem to hesitate — he saw purple and went after it. He reared back and butted H9’s rear end like NFL linemen smashing into a tackling dummy. If that gangster’s posterior had contained any bones, the sound of them breaking could have been heard a hundred yards away.
The screams were pitiful, but how does one intercede with a seething goat and a stupid criminal? Negotiate? Herb, who’d been summoned in the meantime, provided minor commentary. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Billie quite that peeved before.”
The only thing that saved the thug on the dirt mound was that H5, who’d hit the big rock, finally came to again. Then he got up to run. Due to his fogginess, however, H5 actually only staggered a bit. One could almost read the expression on the goat’s hairy face: Aw, this is way too easy. But that didn’t prevent Billie from putting forth maximum effort. He turned from H9 on the mound and speared H5, staggering a short distance away. With both felons prone and some distance apart, the irate animal seemed finally to have reached a quandary. Who gets butted next?
Now, if goats were deep thinkers, one could imagine he was trying to figure out which direction to attack. But goats have a dull, glassy look to their eyes and it’s likely Billie just went for the gangster who was nearest. Or the first one who flinched.
For a while Billie went back and forth, butting one, then trotting the other direction and butting the other. For their part, both gangsters had either decided to play dead, or their terror had frozen them where they were.
The goat finally seemed to lose a bit of his enthusiasm and simply stood guard, approximately midway between the criminals.
The city police took that opportunity to mount an effort to corral Billie. A few set out with their batons for defense and ropes for capture. Most men like a little bit of rodeo. But Billie was considerably less than cooperative.
Sergeant Rodney asked Herb for assistance. “Can’t you call him or something?”
“Call him? That ain’t no dadgum house pet! Barnyard goats only come when they’re hungry or want to butt you.”
“So when’s his supper time?”
“Goats eat all day long, but I usually put out his regular feed around sundown.”
Rodney signaled his colleagues to come back. “Hold up, guys. This ain’t no good. Animal Control’s on the way — they can put a couple darts in him. No need one of us getting hurt trying to keep a few more bruises off these perps.”
The three officers looked greatly relieved, because two of them had gotten close enough to see the look in Billie’s eyes. At this point it seemed the old goat didn’t much like the color of police uniforms either.