Dan and the Bottle Ch. 19

Ok, folks... as promised, here's the next chapter. It isn't quite as long as I thought it was going to be, but long enough. I spent a fair amount of time editing, adding a bit here, taking out a bit there, which explains why it took so long; I'm introducing some new people, too, so bear with me. As usual, I fully expect to piss off some liberals, but to be honest, I don't care. I hope you enjoy it.

In other parts of the country, rebellion was brewing. In northern California, far from the liberal centers in Los Angeles and the Bay area, people who had long been independent of the democrat machine that had run the state before the war had kept their heads down, quietly living off the land while the southern part of the state took a hammering during the war.

There had, of course, been a fair few cases of radiation sickness; it was inevitable, considering how many nukes the state had taken, and the wide range of wind spread fallout.

Gene Anderson had lived in the north country all of his life. His great great grandfather had moved out to a cabin in the foothills of the mountain country to get away from what he referred to as 'the goddamn commies who are ruinin' this state!' He had blankly refused to turn in the .45 automatic and the select fire M3 carbine he had carried from Omaha beach to the heart of Germany during World War two; telling anyone who would listen that he'd fought to protect his right to do so, and any asshole in Sacremento who said he couldn't keep 'em could damned well kiss his ass.

He'd moved up to the north country, built a cabin that backed up to the opening of an old gold mine, and had financed many of the improvements he'd made through the simple expediency of expanding his home into the mountainside, using the small amounts of gold he found on semi-annual runs to Vegas, where he would buy more guns, ammunition, long term storage foods, solar panels, and anything else that struck his fancy, smuggling the goods back to his hidden cabin in the woods by the pick-up load.

Gene still lived in the small community that had grown around his great granddad's place, most of which had been former soldiers like his ancestor. All of them had followed his ancestor's example, honeycombing the mountain with tunnels to the point that it was hard to tell where one home ended and the next began. Outside there were a dozen or more small, cleared fields, growing everything from corn and wheat to tomatoes, potatoes, and hay for the numerous animals they kept.

Gene's son Donny made his living through farming, hunting, and prospecting, though not in the older meaning of the word. Every day he was out with his metal detector, looking for buried caches of people long dead; people who had buried stashes of weapons, ammunition, and other survival supplies.

His optimism wasn't entirely unfounded; he carried a Thompson sub machine gun, which had come from the first such stash he had found, while actually looking for gold. He had since found several others, containing everything from semi-automatic 9mm pistols to fine shotguns to several crates of fully automatic M16s. He'd long since lost count of the number of hidden stashes of ammunition he'd found.... he still had at least twenty different calibers that he didn't even have guns for... yet.

His father had joked, once, that he could easily open a sporting goods store. A fair number of his neighbors, in fact, traded with him for some of the ancient ammo, among other things.

He even found a little gold, on occasion.

Several of their neighbors had been talking about forming their own militia; they had heard, over the past year, of a militia group to the east that was driving the Chinese to distraction, and many of them wanted to form their own group to help in the fight to drive the Chinese from their country. Most had little experience with military training, it was true, but they were disgusted with what they'd seen in the more low-lying areas of the state to the south of them... and most were, at the least, experienced hunters. Chinese soldiers were well known, to the south, for keeping much of the civilian population in virtual slavery.

A few of them got together, every week or so, for barbecue, homebrewed beer, and home made wine, and more and more, the talk amongst them centered on what to do about the Chinese.

It was becoming obvious to them that the time for action was fast approaching, as the Chinese were forcing their way further into the mountains, looking for 'troublemakers'. Rumors were flying, of course, but they knew there was a grain of truth behind them. Anyone caught with a firearm was immediately arrested... Hell, they'd known that. It had been California public policy for years before the great war.

Patrick Murray, a long time resident, knew it firsthand; his great grand father had been threatened with arrest for refusing to turn in a semi-automatic Bushmaster AR 15.... while serving in the US Marines, at a military base in the Bay area. His CO told the Sheriff's deputies that if they didn't get the hell off his base, he'd arrest them and put them in front of a military tribunal on the charge of Treason against the US Constitution.

Treason, he had reminded them, was a capitol crime, punishable by hanging.

Donny and many of his neighbors were hunters already, and knew a thing or two about camoflage, blending in with the landscape while they stalked deer and other animals in the foothills area. Now they dug out many of the old books that had been hidden away by their ancestors; books on outdoorsman skills, novels about various fighters and scouts from previous wars, military surplus textbooks for soldier training, ranger handbooks, and training guides for such exotic groups as the British SAS, the Green Berets, and the Russian Spetznaz, combing through them for any little nuggets of information they could find.

Meanwhile, far to the east, in rural Texas, another such group was forming, along quite similar lines. Texas had, before the war, been a 'machine gun friendly' state. A fair number of residents had been collectors of automatic weapons, and many of those had scoffed when the feds had informed them that such weapons were to be turned in for destruction, in the days leading up to the Great war, basically giving the liberal democrats the finger.

One conservative candidate for the state legislature had, in fact, taken it a step further. During a debate with his liberal democrat opponent, who had been a long time advocate of gun control and confiscation; prior to a mid-term election, the flamboyant republican had produced a large rubber dildo and had invited his openly lesbian counterpart to go fuck herself.

She was not amused.... but the voters were. The conservative candidate won by a large margin.

The video of this incident, while heavily censored by the TV stations, had gone out on the internet in it's raw form. Within two hours, it had been viewed and shared well over a million times. It had been titled 'A good answer for the gun grabbers.'

Mike O'Connell, whose great-great-grandfather had been a World War Two veteran, was one of the founding members of this particular group. He was also the current owner of his ancestor's collection, much of which he'd brought back when he came home from his march across Europe.

Among his collection were several Thompson sub machine guns, four Browning Automatic Rifles, an M2 Browning .50 cal., a Finnish Lahti 20mm anti-tank cannon, which had been obsolete by the time the war started, and a German MG42 belt-fed machine gun, which he'd had a gunsmith re-chamber to take .308 rounds. It hadn't been cheap, but the trade off was that ammunition was cheaper and far more plentiful for it. He'd also brought back a fair number of bolt action rifles, from Germany, England, and the US.

Mike's grandfather had told him, once, that when his father had come home from the war, the three big crates he'd brought with him had taken up almost the entire bed of his uncle's old farm truck... and a good portion of the weapons he'd brought back had been won from other soldiers on the ship home, playing poker.

Most of these were still hidden, in the cellar of one of the barns at the ancestral farm in west Texas, carefully oiled and put away for the day they might be needed... Mike's grandfather, Frank, had had fond memories of firing the many machine guns in this collection... and adding to it.

There had been a thriving black market for such weapons in Texas for decades, before the war, and great grandpa had taken full advantage of it, reasoning that he was getting the full automatic M16s and Uzis and Mac 10s off the streets and away from the hands of the gang bangers and the drug cartels. He had also spent much of the money he'd made working in the oilfields on reloading equipment, supplies, and case upon case of ammunition, stashing it all in the cellars beneath the several old barns on the property. The dry Texas climate was perfect for long term storage of such things.

Mike himself was trained in gunsmithing by his own father from an early age, and had in fact grown up scavenging the nearby towns for lead, much of it in the form of old wheel weights taken from the tires of old, abandoned cars and several local junkyards. This he melted down to cast bullets from.

Many of his neighbors, who were farmers and ranchers, for the most part, wanted to get in on the action as well. They, too, had heard stories, recently, about a modern day militia that was giving the Chinese fits to the north of them; and since many of them had had cattle rustled to feed the Chinese and Cuban armies, by little yellow and brown men who took the animals in broad daylight, at gunpoint, the men were spoiling for a fight. All of them had suffered lean years because of the depridations of the Communists. What they lacked in skill, they made up for with enthusiasm....and firepower.

Things finally came to a head one day, when one of the smaller ranches was invaded by yet another squad of Cuban troops. When the rancher came outside, to tell them he had nothing left to give, the Cuban commander merely sneered and told his troops to 'load them all up!'

The rancher calmly went inside of his house, called several of his neighbors on the CB radio, and sat back to wait.

Within five minutes, men on horseback, carrying rifles which had mostly been provided by Mike, were streaming onto his property. They spread out, in two semi circles, surrounding the Cubans.

The leader of this group, Phil Gregory, calmly informed them that they weren't takin' Jake's cattle.

Captain Menendez looked up and realized his men were surrounded; what's more, these men were carrying guns! He decided to try to bluster his way out.... after all, his soldiers had these people thoroughly cowed, didn't they?

"You men will hand over those guns and go back to your homes, and be glad we allow you to live!"

He didn't get the response he expected. A three round burst of .223 rounds from Mike's M4 Carbine shut him up for good. His men tried to bring their AK 47s to bear, but it was too little, too late. Every Texan there had chosen a target, and their rifles spoke.... and loudly, at that. The soldiers fell like bowling pins.

Only one of the soldiers got a shot off. Billy Mason, one of the ranch hands on Phil's ranch, spun and dropped.

He was hit in the shoulder, and would spend the next three months healing. He was lucky. The local medic had just recently located an old stash of an anti biotic creme, and he didn't lose the arm to gangrene.

After the last soldier had been killed, the farmers and ranchers had unloaded the cattle from the trailer, loaded up the bodies, after taking every weapon and other useful items from the corpses, and drove the Hummer that the trailer was hooked up to into the nearest town, parking the vehicles a half block away from the Cuban garrison and walking away.

The Cubans in the garrison didn't notice the returned vehicles for nearly four hours... and by the time they did, the heat of the Texas sun was already doing it's work.... the bodies were starting to get decidedly ripe.

In the mountains of northern Kentucky, Seth Jones was busy tending to his still, hidden in the backwoods at the extreme edge of the family's ancestral property. The local detachment of the Cuban army, that controlled this part of the country, claimed that people no longer owned the land; that they were merely permitted to live there. The residents largely ignored them, save for those times when the local platoons came calling to attempt to confiscate food.

This didn't work, for the most part, as the locals had long been adept at hiding things they didn't want found... and Cuban soldiers who ventured too deep into the mountains in search of these hiding places were unlikely to come out. Many, in fact, wound up fertilizing the very fields and gardens they had come looking for in the first place.

Garden plots, most no larger than a few hundred square yards, were plentiful, mostly tended by people the soldiers never saw. The hill people were fiercely independent, and weren't likely to change anytime soon.

Seth finished feeding the wood into the firebox of his still, picking up the AK47 he had taken from a dead Cuban soldier a few summers ago, and headed back to take care of his mother's gardens.

This year she was growing tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce, carrots, and a rather large amount of beans, some of which she would trade for corn and other grains. On the way home, he decided to check his trap lines.

His snares had been generous today... he had seven rabbits and a squirrel for the dinner table. He quickly field dressed them before heading home, leaving the small pile of guts out for the local scavengers.

One of the neighbors was over; Harry Ballard's truck was parked out front. 'Probably wants another tank full of 'shine for his old beater.' he thought. More of the alcohol he made wound up being used as fuel than was drank, he knew... but it brought in a steady stream of barter, so he didn't really care how it was used.

Inside the kitchen, he found Harry at the table, drinking a glass of grape juice. He must have just pressed a new batch, and brought some over.... but when he turned, at Seth's entrance, Seth knew immediately that something was wrong.

"Harry, what's the matter?"

"They got 'em, Seth... the Goddamn Cubans took a bunch of kids. Took 'em right out of the pond a few hours ago."

The pond was the local swimmin' hole, and a lot of the local kids used it as such when nobody was there to fish.

"Well, then, we gotta get 'em back. All there is to it. Question is, how the hell did they get that close?"'

"Don't know.... but the kids are gone, and there's tracks from one o' them big ol' Army trucks, backed up right to the pond.... lotta boot prints all around, from the boots them bastards wear. They took our kids, man!"

Seth took special note of the 'our'. It told him that Harry's own daughter might well be among the kids who had been taken.

"Ok, calm down, Harry.... won't do no one any good, goin' off half-cocked. We need to find 'em, and we need a plan for a-bringin' 'em back."

"I've already called on Mike Hunter and Bill Jaeger.... surprised they ain't here, yet."

Hearing tires crunch in the gravel driveway, Seth nodded. "That's probably them now."

Seth stepped to the door, admitting the two men, then turned to his base station CB radio, setting the dial to channel three.

"Break channel." He said into the mic, calmly.

"You broke it, you fix it." came the response.

"Jimmy, we need to get the network up an' workin'. Them Goddamn Cubans done took a bunch o' kids. We need to find out where they're bein' held, and we're gonna need some folks to bring 'em back."

"Gotcha, Seth.... I'll start makin' phone calls, get ever-one out lookin'. Who-all knows already?"

"Harry, Mike, and Bill are here, so don't worry about them.... get the rest of our people out an' about. We need to know where the kids are bein' held, and how many."

"Got it.... anything else?"

"Yeah.... tell everyone to make sure they've got plenty of ammo loaded up." Seth concluded, grimly.

"Roger that."

Within an hour, the people of the hills were organized, and an hour after that, they knew exactly where the children were.... a small, barbed wire enclosed encampment outside of Lewiston, which the people had long suspected was a 're-education' center.

Within another two hours, the men of the small village, along with groups from several other local towns, had assembled in a field not far from the place.

A few wanted to just go in the front gate, kill every soldier there, and take the kids back by main force; cooler heads prevailed, however, and planning began in earnest. It wouldn't do any good if the kids got caught in the crossfire.

A little after dawn, multiple gunshots rang out; all around the camp, Cuban soldiers died. By the time the alarm was raised, more of the soldiers were streaming out of the log barracks, only to find themselves stepping into what amounted to a target range for the people of the nearby hills.

Within another hour, the gates had been unchained, the kids were on their way home, and the dead soldiers were stacked in the center of the camp like cordwood.

Seth took a gallon jug of 'shine from his backpack and poured about half of it over the stack of corpses before Harry stepped up, grabbing the jug from his hands.

"Good Goddamn, boy, you just gonna waste it all? Your daddy'd be ashamed of you!" Taking a long swig from the jug, he grinned and passed it back.

Seth smiled, taking a long pull from the jug himself, and fished out a kitchen match, igniting it with a flick of his thumb and tossing it on the pile of bodies.

"I didn't want to count on them uniforms o' theirs staying lit up. 'Sides, there's more where that came from."

With that, he stepped over to the barracks that the soldiers had been using, looking through the door for long moments before stepping inside. Moments later, he stepped back out with a big ammo can in each hand.

Bill Jaeger saw what he was up to and ran to join him, and the two of them, now aided by several others, cleared the building of spare ammunition, rifles and pistols, grenades, RPGs, and other useful ordnance, loading it into ancient trucks and horse drawn wagons; upon finishing, Seth again pulled out his jug of moonshine, pouring a long trail of it down the center of the room between the bunks, and set it ablaze. It would burn long enough to catch the wooden floor and the bunks on fire, and from there, it was all over.

Others pulled out their own jugs and canteens, making sure the rest of the buildings in the small camp got the same treatment. By the time they left, the entire camp was burning merrily.

Further north, in the ruins of Detroit, now occupied by elements of the Chinese army, acts of rebellion were a bit more complex. Once a manufacturing powerhouse, the city and it's suburbs had been decimated during the war; there were still areas there so hot with radioactivity that walking into them, even with heavy protective gear, was considered a death sentence. Still, a few of the old factories, in some of the far-flung suburbs, had been brought back online, building various equipment for the Chinese military.... when the assembly lines weren't being sabotaged by the locals, acts which happened frequently.

Jim Archer sat in the communications room, reading the transcripts from his interpreters of the reports the Chinese and Cubans were making around the country, and sat back, smiling broadly. The links to the assorted communications satellites were working perfectly, and the reports coming in were heartening, to say the least. He and his people were no longer alone in their fight.