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The front great room and adjoining dining room were packed with people as the surrounding neighbors had joined them to hear about and discuss the earlier confrontation with the three men. Randy recounted the conversation to the group with Brody and Sean interrupting from time to time to add a detail. A few people asked questions, but for the most part everyone sat quietly, listening to Randy. When he was finished, the room was silent for a few moments while everyone processed the gravity of the situation.
“We’ve got to do something. We’ve got to get Rachel back,” Rose pleaded. Caleb’s wife was one of the women who had been taking care of and supporting Butch’s wife after his death. “She was suffering and depressed, but there is no way she would have left with those men..., especially without telling us.”
“I know,” Sean said, agreeing with her. “But we have no way to know where they took her. Tionesta may be a small town, but it is still a town with lots of houses and plenty of people left. We can’t just go wandering around knocking on doors for her. Besides, their security forces are going to be on alert, I’m sure. They’re going to be looking for strangers or people out of place.”
“Well, we can’t just sit back and do nothing!” Rose said, aggravated.
“No one is saying that we aren’t going to look for her,” Sean snapped back, looking at Caleb for some help. Caleb put his hand on his wife’s shoulder and Sean smiled at her softening his tone. “We just need to be smart about this or else you are going to have more widows to look after.” Sean regretted the last part which didn’t come out right and produced a look of chagrin from Caleb. Sean shrugged his shoulders in apology and looked down at his feet, giving someone else the opportunity to jump in.
“I don’t think there is any doubt that this Mr. Andrews intends to take our supplies,” Brody cut in, changing the direction of the conversation. “He was sizing us up, that’s all. He’s probably got a couple hundred mouths to feed and the only way he is going to maintain control is if he keeps the people fed. I’m sure he knows that. I believe his patrols are more for reconnaissance than for protecting the outlying farms from looters. In fact, they are probably the looters. That being said, I’m betting that most townsfolk would take up arms for him just to keep their children’s bellies full. They may be unaware of what he is doing or where he is getting the food. Hungry people aren’t going to ask a lot of questions when they are eating. My impression of him is that he’s no one to take lightly. Any man that could take control over an entire town this quickly is definitely someone to be reckoned with. We should take him and his threat seriously is all I’m saying.”
Most people nodded their heads in agreement. Everyone looked to Brody in matters of security due to his time in Afghanistan as an Army Ranger.
“What do you suggest?” Damian asked him bluntly.
Brody stood there silently for a moment and then sighed, “We are going to have to kill him.” Brody’s answer caused the room to fall deathly silent with only the crackling sound of the fire burning in the hearth.
“What are we, assassins now?” Emily said sarcastically.
Sean had been sitting silently listening to his friends, but when no one said anything, he answered her. “No, Emily. We are survivors. Mr. Andrews is also a survivor, albeit from a different cut of cloth. What would you have us do? Conform and live under his rule as his subjects? Would you give up your freedom for a little security? Do you really think he is going to just let us be?” Sean turned his attention away from Emily and towards the rest of the group so she wouldn’t feel singled out. “Are we going to pack up, leave our homes and fields behind and try to start over somewhere else? Who honestly thinks we can do that?” He raised his hand in the air, looking for a response.
“With all the preparation we have done, all the blood, sweat and tears we have poured into this place, who is willing to just hand that over to a tyrant? What are our options here, people? Brody threw out a good option and, in my opinion, probably the best option. Who else has a better idea?” Everyone looked around at each other uncomfortably.
“We could just hold our ground and fight them only if we have to,” Peter’s wife presented.
“Maybe we should try and reason with them. Offer them some food, but let them know they can’t have our guns,” Andrew offered up to Sean’s surprise.
Sean looked at him, disappointed. “Andrew, if we give them food today, they will keep coming back week after week till we have nothing left. He doesn’t want to tax us. He wants it all. He wants us to move to town and live under his rule. I, for one, will never do that!” A bunch of heads nodded in agreement to Sean’s passion. “I think that Mr. Andrews has probably known we were here for some time now. The pickings are most likely getting slim on the surrounding farms. He must be getting desperate for food to approach us so aggressively. We can’t feed the entire town.”
“What is the point of all this?” Rose stood up, swinging her arms wide. “When Caleb first approached me about this retreat, I have to admit that I thought he was a little crazy. But the way he explained it to me is that this place was supposed to be a safe haven, a community, a light in the darkness.... The Bible calls on us to help the helpless. We need to do our part to help those in need. All we’re talking about here is giving some hungry people some food.”
“I agree with you Rose. That is what we are called as Christians to do and we have been doing that to the best of our ability by aiding those around us,” Sean said, sweeping his hand around the room. “But we also have to be cautious and make wise decisions. There are millions of people starving all across this country right now. Most of them probably a lot worse off than those in Tionesta. Do you intend to feed everyone who is suffering? Lord Jesus, I would absolutely love to if we could, but we can’t! We can’t take on an entire town right now. We have to grow slowly. We only have so many provisions and supplies. If we give it all away, we may feed those people for a few weeks, maybe a month. They will be in the same boat a few weeks from now, except that now we will be rowing right alongside with them. This retreat is about community, but I’m sorry... our community and our families come first.” He looked around the room, making eye contact with each person.
“We may be able to take on a few more families this summer, but we need to figure out how fast we are going through our food first and how large of a crop yield we can produce and store each winter. It is too soon to take too many people on without knowing whether or not we can feed them through the upcoming winter. Again, if we grow too quickly, we could run out of food the first winter and everyone could starve. Next summer, we will have a better idea of what we are doing and what it takes to make it through a winter. Do you remember our firewood situation? It was gone in early February and we still had months of cold weather ahead, forcing us to go out in the cold and harvest firewood. Who would have known ahead of time that we would have needed so much firewood? You see, one wrong decision, even one out of compassion, and our whole community could suffer or die. We really need to think things through. Feeding the town of Tionesta is absolutely not an option. Even giving them a portion of our supplies out of compassion doesn’t even make a dent in solving their food problems and it only makes our community weaker and Mr. Andrews more powerful.
“I believe that we need to do something soon. If they run out of food, those people will become desperate again. The more unscrupulous members of that town could join his band of mercenaries and become an insanely powerful raiding party with Mr. Andrews at the helm. We won’t stand a chance at that point, and neither will anyone else. If I were to guess, the only reason he gave us two whole weeks was for his benefit not ours. He knows we aren’t going to change our minds. He needs time to recruit more foot soldiers. If we wait too long, I fear we will be outnumbered far worse than we are now.”
Brody interrupted him, “Sean, the problem is that we are going in blind. We don’t know anything about the town, where he lives, or the proficiency of their security. We have to develop some sort of plan. While he is adding more deputies, we need to be doing some recon. My hope is that if we cut the head off the snake, the rest of it will die as well. Nothing is for sure, though. If we take him out, they may try and retaliate...may. Then again, maybe the deputies will try and appoint another leader. Maybe the townsfolk will rebel at that time and get rid of the yoke they are living under. In order for that to work, they would need to have another leader ready, one with integrity that could keep things together during the transition. I don’t know if such man exists in the town right now. Either way, I would rather take my chances with fighting the deputies off leaderless than a straight forward pitched battle with Mr. Andrews at the helm and on their time table. We will definitely lose a lot of people that way... if we survive at all.”
Brody looked at Beth Ann, the young lady from Tionesta sitting meekly in the back corner. “How often does Mr. Andrews give his little speeches? Is there any repetition to them, like every Sunday, etc?”
Their neighbor had to nudge his sister to get her attention. “Huh? Oh... not really, maybe every week or two. It usually revolves around someone breaking a law or disciplinary measures. They just ring the church bell once to signal a meeting.”
“Does he hold them at the same spot?” Brody asked, trying to get more details out of her.
“Yes, usually in the town square where he had a stage built.”
“I’m not so sure my idea will work,” Brody said, rubbing his chin. “I was thinking about a sniper taking a position in an empty house overlooking the stage and taking him out publically during one of his speeches. It’s really risky though. We don’t know when he will give his next speech. Someone would have to stay silent and hidden in position for up to two weeks. That is assuming we could find an abandoned house with a good sight line within two hundred yards of the stage. It would have to be a headshot, as I noticed he was wearing a bullet proof vest under his wool sweater when he visited. Either that or he works out a lot. Hmmm...it’s really risky, and if the sniper was captured or found, we would never know ahead of time and I’m sure they would use that as an excuse to attack us immediately. It’s really, really risky.”
“Where does Mr. Andrews live?” Randy asked Beth Ann.
“I don’t know, not in town though. I think he drives in each morning and leaves each evening.”
“We could place some scouts along the roadway to track his direction,” Randy said to Brody.
“That could take too long. The scouts would have to watch the road each day and then move further up the road the following day or you could miss him turning off on some side road. If he lives miles outside of town, it could take a few weeks. Meanwhile, our scouts would have to survive alone for weeks beside the road without fire and with the added risk of being detected by patrols.”
“Why don’t we set up a road block and capture one of their patrols and question them... harshly?” Damian asked Brody.
Sean jumped in to answer his question, “One, we risk losing men in an ambush. Two, we don’t know how large their patrols are. How many men would we have to kill before they surrender? How many would we actually capture? How many men would we lose? Where would we keep them? How do you plan to get them to talk? How bad are you willing to hurt them?” Sean paused for a moment to let his questions sink in. “As a former SERE Instructor, I’ve been through and received a lot of training on interrogations, but it is a time-consuming process if you are unwilling to torture. If you do torture them, the information is unreliable as someone will say anything to get the pain to stop, whether they know the answer or not. If you have enough hostages, you can compare answers and put the pieces together, but are we really willing to go down that road? Three, what do you do with them once you’re done? Kill them? Besides, I think Mr. Andrews is going to notice if one of his patrols doesn’t come back.”
“It was just an idea” Damian said defensively.
“No, no, no...,” Sean replied with an encouraging smile. “It was a good idea, you’re thinking outside the box, but that’s not who we are and I’m just not sure we want to go down that road. C’mon people, think! Speak up if you have an idea.” Sean looked around the room, frustrated.
Brody walked across the room to where the young lady from Tionesta sat in silence. “Would you be willing to go back to town and try to...”
“No!” her brother stepped in front of her defensively. “No way is she going back there. They could kill her if they found out where she has been.”
She reached up from her chair and lightly pushed her brother aside so she could address Brody. “If this is the only way... I will go,” she said quietly.
“No!” er brother said again, this time angrily. “I will not allow it. You know what you are asking of her!” he shot Brody an icy glare.
“Yes..., I do,” Brody said gently, looking down at his shoes so as not to challenge the man. Most of the people in the room did not understand and were unaware of the rapes that were taking place in town by some of the deputies.
“Brody, I think that should be a last resort,” Randy said.
“I agree,” Sean offered as well.
“I don’t know that we have any other options here,” Brody replied while moving across the room to where he was originally standing. “We are at our last resort. I’m not sure how else to get intel or find out where Mr. Andrews lives. She is the only person that can enter the town without raising suspicions. We just need to come up with a good back story if someone challenges where she’s been. That is if anyone even noticed she was gone.”
“I still think we need to consider other options first,” Randy said.
“Well, I’m all ears,” Brody said loudly. He turned in a circle to the thirty plus members of their community. “Does anyone else have a better idea?”
“This is a bad idea!” the girl’s brother said to the group. “You have no right to ask her to do this!” He said the last turning from Brody and looking straight into Sean’s eyes, pleading.
Sean turned away from the man’s gaze. “Let’s meet again in two days. Everyone spend this time in prayer or contemplation, or whatever it is you do. We’ll come together and we want more ideas, people! If we are going to ask this young lady to risk her life, then I want to know that every other possible bridge to get there has been burned.” He finished the last sentence by returning his gaze back to the neighbor and nodding at him. Sean was looking for some acknowledgement, but the man didn’t reply, he just grabbed his coat and stormed out, leaving the group in an uncomfortable silence.
MR. ANDREWS SLAMMED the door behind him as he dropped down into the chair across from Sheriff Branson’s desk. “Who do these people think they are?” he yelled for his own benefit, not really wanting an answer from the Sheriff. Branson just shrugged his shoulders. “This is exactly what I was talking about. This is why this country was going down the toilet before the EMP hit. All anyone cares about is themselves. No one wants to join his neighbor and be part of something bigger. We need to nip this in the bud. That group’s way of thinking is contagious and could pose problems if they start spreading their ideas around town.”
“What do you propose?” Branson asked, already knowing the answer.
“I am a man of my word. We’ll give them the two weeks and then if they don’t want to play ball, I plan to wipe out their camp entirely.”
“And exactly how do you propose we do that?” Branson asked. “We may have more actual bodies than they do, but most of our volunteers are untrained and just volunteering for the extra rations we supply them with. I’m not so sure how willing they will be to fight a war for you right now.”
“You leave that to me: hearts and minds, remember? The people need to be informed about how dangerous this lot is. It’s purely a matter of painting the proper picture for them.”
“Do you really think that this group of preppers means us any harm?” Sheriff Branson asked, trying to figure out the logic Mr. Andrews would use on the people. He knew that Mr. Andrews was a very gifted motivational speaker, but motivating people to risk their lives was another story.
“Of course they do. Maybe not directly, but their greedy nature and their refusal to help support the community will result in people going hungry and suffering needlessly,” Mr. Andrews said slowly as if he was convincing himself as well.
“...and you think people will go to war for you on that message?” Branson asked cynically.
“Of course not!” Mr. Andrews responded, laughing. “The people will join me when they find out that this gang of marauders have been invading our city and stealing our supplies as well as raping our women in the night.”
Branson smirked back at him knowing that the story was false but admired him for the willingness to tell it. “So the end justifies the means?”
“That’s right. But every message also has to be built around at least a bit of truth for it to resonate and motivate. I have been aware for some time now the extracurricular activities of you and your men...”
“As I yours,” Branson said, cutting him off with a wry smile. While he and some of his men may be receiving some pleasure by offering extra rations and supplies to the more accommodating women in town, Mr. Andrews’s men were known to take it to another level. Sheriff Branson had been approached on a few occasions from women seeking protection or justice from Mr. Andrews and his men. Without wanting to cross Mr. Andrews, he had politely informed them that he was swamped with investigating the major crimes and murders in town. He would tell them that without proof and multiple witnesses, his hands were tied because it was their word against another’s. Most took the suggestion and left frustrated, but a couple women really made a raucous over it. Going against his warnings, and to Sheriff Branson’s dismay, they continued to make a scene and usually disappeared shortly after.
Mr. Andrews smiled back dryly, “As discretely as possible, you need to inform the participants to make sure the women are willing and not being taken advantage of... at least for the near term. I am going to have my men step up their efforts.” Branson nodded his head in understanding but was thoroughly disgusted by the idea. Mr. Andrews noticed Mr. Branson’s repulsion. “I will make sure they fly under the radar in disguise. We need to be able to pin this on the looters. I am also going to have my men perform a night raid on the weapons storage facility tonight. Do we still have three men guarding it each night?”
“We do,” Branson nodded.
“Pull two of them away tonight. Tell your men that we encountered a large gang of people living not too far away and that we are going to be beefing up our perimeter security. Who’s your most worthless deputy?”
Sheriff Branson thought on it for a few moments. “Probably Tony Salino. You met him the day you came into town. He’s fat, lazy, and late for pretty much everything.”
“Ok then, make sure he is on duty tonight.”
“What are you planning to do to him?” Branson asked suspiciously. “He may be fat and lazy but he is also funny and well liked by most of the men.”
“Tony’s sacrifice will be total. It will also be the last rung on the ladder to get the people motivated enough to take up arms and defend their town.”
Sheriff Branson squirmed in his chair uncomfortably. “I’m not so sure that I’m ok with that...,” he said seriously. “Lying to people and some of the other circumstances that may or may not be happening around town I can stomach, but this seems a bit extreme even for you. That man has a wife and kid.”
Mr. Andrews stared at the Sheriff in challenge. “That just makes the story more heartbreaking, doesn’t it, that these scum would do that?” Mr. Andrews let out a long sigh as if the thought bothered him as well. “I will do whatever it takes to provide for and feed my town. Tony is just one member of our community and his sacrifice will feed a lot of people, saving multiple lives in the long run. The end justifies the means even if those means are sometimes hard to stomach,” Mr. Andrews smiled at the Sheriff in a consoling way.
Branson wasn’t convinced and didn’t really agree with Mr. Andrews’s logic. He looked down at his desk, breaking eye contact with the leader of their town, “I don’t know....”
Mr. Andrews’s facial expression quickly turned very severe. “Well, you better figure it out and come to terms with what needs to be done. The day we met outside of town, I thought you told me that the town needed a Sheriff that was able to make tough decisions to keep his town safe. You are that man, right?”
Sheriff Branson still wasn’t happy about the situation but at the same time didn’t want to cross Mr. Andrews. If he was willing to kill a man he didn’t even know just to add credence to a story he wanted to tell, then what would he do to someone who stood in his way? “What time do you want him on duty?”
Mr. Andrews’s dangerous countenance instantly turned optimistic. “Whatever time the night shift usually goes on duty will be fine, just as long as he is there alone around 3 a.m.” Mr. Andrews got up to leave and turned back to Branson as he was walking through the door. “Don’t worry, Sheriff. You’ll see. Once these things happen, the people will be firmly on my side and rush to join me and take up arms.” He smiled at the Sheriff once more and then closed the door behind him.
“That’s what I’m worried about,” Branson muttered under his breath at the closed door.