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  Taylor took a deep breath. So, this was the gang that’d victimized the people on both Mastick Road and the horse farms. He knew what was coming. Dear God, stop me before I become like them. They’re thugs who’ve raped and killed, and burned people out of their homes. They’ll only get what they deserve.

  “Okay,” Taylor said. “They’re yours.”

  "Stolz,” Phelps called. “Dig a hole big enough to hold all of these slime-balls.”

  The prisoners heard him. Their faces blanched.

  #

  Taylor took Weitzman aside. "Look, Shel, this is our chance to get supplies and finish off this warehouse gang."

  "What've you got in mind?"

  "We go and clean out the warehouse."

  "You really want to do that?" Weitzman's long face grew longer. "I mean, what if they resist and we fail?"

  "We won't. There’re more of us than them. The warehouse is almost deserted. Someone else will do it if we don't."

  "I don't want anyone else getting hurt," Weitzman called as Taylor walked away. "I don't want us to become like them."

  But I am becoming like them, Taylor thought. And it doesn’t seem to bother me. Lord help me.

  #

  The Clan's midnight raid caught the warehouse’s inhabitants by surprise. The guard surrendered after a gun was stuck in his ribs. No shots were fired.

  They found Ted Callioux, battered and bleeding. His first question was about his wife, Sandy. No one knew what had happened to her, except that Mark Thompson had taken her away. They put Callioux on the first truck back to the Oxbow.

  "Y’know," Taylor said, looking around. "There's a lot of material here. More than we can haul in one load."

  "Yeah." Phelps nodded. "Still, we'd better get the stuff moved, and quick. Did you know that there’s a tank of diesel fuel behind the automotive section?"

  "Really?" Taylor's eyes widened. "How much?"

  "At least five hundred gallons." Phelps smiled wryly. "I guess I'd better let Stolz know about that right away."

  "Did you see all those canned goods?" Taylor waved his hand toward the aisles of racks. "Fruit, vegetables, salmon and meat. Man, I'm getting hungry thinking about it. Even fruit juice. And rice, sacks and sacks of it. Did you see all that pasta? Cases of it. I can almost taste one of Maria's great Italian meals."

  "If you keep that up, I'm gonna need something to eat.”

  Taylor gestured at the food section. "I'm really surprised at how much is here. Y’know, there's an awful lot of space taken up by totally useless things, like TVs, computers and electronic junk where there could be food."

  "Yeah," Phelps said. "Funny how your values change."

  #

  Taylor worked until dawn and through much of the next day to get the warehouse stripped of its food.

  Wow, he thought, between grain from the horse farms and this, we've got enough food to last through next winter. They even found half-dozen rifles and several cases of ammunition. He began to feel more secure.

  Chapter 14

  Lager

  Bright sunlight streaming through the peak of Taylor’s A-frame woke him. As he dressed, the dream, no, the nightmare about those who’d died came flooding back. Mark Hauer was dead and his wife, Kristine, was now a widow with two babies. When will it end? He’d tried to protect them and failed. He shivered and felt the urge to run away. He prayed and hoped for guidance that never came. After breakfast, he sent for the team leaders.

  "We've got to improve our defenses." Taylor leaned forward over the picnic bench that served as his open-air conference center. The day was warming rapidly.

  "Oh?" Stolz said. "I thought I built our defenses the way you wanted them. Something wrong with what I did?"

  "No, what you did was fine. They’ve got to be stronger."

  "Yeah?" Stolz's chin moved forward. "Like how?"

  "Fred," Taylor said. "Tell us your idea.”

  "Well, we can build walls real easy-like." Fred described how to build a wall from two parallel chain link fences filled with rocks and rubble to make gabions. When he was through, the gathering was silent.

  "Any objections?" Taylor looked around the group. "No? Well, Mr. Stolz, that's how you'll do it. Okay with you?"

  "Well, okay, I guess." He frowned and pursed his lips.

  "Good." Taylor looked at his notes. "Next. We need shelter, fast. Any ideas?"

  "Yeah." John Wylie jutted his chin forward. "How about moving a metal building here? Like one of the barns at the horse farms."

  "Now just a minute." Jack O'Connor glowered at Wylie. "First you take all our animal feed, now you want our buildings? Are we bank-rolling this entire operation?"

  "You came here to be safe." Taylor frowned. "When things get better, you can have your buildings back."

  The corners of O'Connor’s mouth turned down.

  "Anyone know how to move these buildings?" Taylor asked.

  "I do," Phelps said. "I've put 'em up. I think I have an assembly manual back at my house. Plus, I've got tools."

  "Can you start first thing tomorrow?"

  "Sure, but I'll need help moving the frames and stuff."

  "How about moving a park shelter to the Hill?" Fred said. "Can we do that?"

  "I've moved whole buildings," Stolz said. "We just don't have the right equipment here to move them."

  "What about taking them apart to move them?" Fred asked.

  "That’d damage the roof," Stolz said.

  "No, those roofs are built in sections," Fred said. "Just split them along the roof seams."

  "But--" Stolz started to say.

  "Enough." Taylor raised his voice. "Discuss it together after the meeting. Let me know if you can do it. Mr. Stolz, don't leave yet." He furrowed his brow. "On the way back from the warehouse, I saw Medina Supply on Front Street in Berea had concrete block. Would they also have cement?"

  "Yeah." Stolz nodded. "I'm sure they do."

  "Hey, Stolz," Phelps said. "What's your charge number?" A grin grew on his face.

  "Well, Fred." Taylor winked. "It looks like we've got masonry supplies, now show us your bricky tricks."

  "Hey, I'm a carpenter, remember? I'm not a bricky."

  #

  The next day, Phelps' crew moved a thirty by eighty-foot metal building to the Oxbow. Chris Kucinski's squad shuttled trucks back and forth from the building supply yard, bringing cement and building block. With scavenged chain link fencing, Wylie's crew closed off both ends of the Oxbow. Every so often, they reported glimpses of faces in the woods, watching.

  Stolz widened the ditch on the south side of the Oxbow and used the excavated materials to build an eight foot-high earthen embankment. Within the barrier, he made alcoves for guards and formed a funnel-shape entrance to the gate.

  #

  A guard called from the lookout point that offered a view of the trail up the Hill. "Four people with a white flag."

  "We heard noise in the park. What's going on?" asked a gray-haired man with rimless glasses.

  "I'm Taylor MacPherson. Who're you? Where're you from?"

  "Patterson Rice from Edgepark. We’re just east of here, next to the NASA Glenn Research Center. There’s about three hundred of us. We heard shooting, and when the tractor and chain saws started up again, we knew you'd survived."

  "That was the warehouse gang. They won't bother anyone anymore," Taylor said with a shrug.

  "Good, but watch out for the Diablos gang," Rice said. "They shot up a section of Fairview, across the freeway, last week. They’ve got some kind of armored vehicle with a machine gun."

  "Jeez," Taylor said. "Y’think you can hold them off?"

  "I don't know. We've blocked the roads. We’re low on guns and ammunition. Have you got any you could spare?"

  "No." Taylor paused. Who’re these people, anyway? He decided to find out. "Maybe there's other ways we could help. Can I visit and get an idea of your needs?"

  "Um." Rice looked at his companions. They nodded. "Tomorrow,
about nine, come to the Cedar Point Road entrance to the Metropark."

  #

  Taylor visited Edgepark but refused to give any commitment about supplying them with equipment. Instead, he redoubled efforts to reinforce the Clan's settlements in the valley. Within a week, the Oxbow had metal gates guarding its entrances. Two rows of chain-link fence with barbed wire crowned the dirt embankments.

  Taylor began to feel safer.

  The large metal building erected on the concrete pad in front of the Park shelter went up more quickly than Taylor believed possible. He’d intended to store extra food in it, but as more refugees arrived, it became an overflow dormitory.

  Now the Clan population exceeded two hundred, Taylor learned from Franny their food would last barely two months. Food. That reminded him of the afternoon when Albert Del Corso complained he never got to use the bow anymore after he'd started to catch fish with it.

  The words came back clearly to Taylor.

  "If I had a bow," Albert had said. "I'd go hunting."

  Sam Wylie, a retired machinist had spoken up, "Tomorrow, I'll show you how to make sling-shots and bows.”

  "Hey," Albert called to his young friends. "Ol' Mr. Wylie is going to make me a sling-shot and a bow."

  "No, show you how," Sam Wylie said. "Not make them.”

  Taylor smiled, for Albert’s hunting efforts with the newly acquired bows, slingshots, and snares had brought in a steady supply of fish and small game. Every little bit helped.

  As he walked back to the Hill, he caught sight of water flowing slowly through a newly excavated channel. He’d had a twinge of conscience when Wylie raided an abandoned construction yard to bring back a small bulldozer and a tracked excavator.

  Now he felt better since Stolz had put the construction equipment to work on improving the Hill's defenses. They used the dozer and track-hoe to widen and deepen the swamp-like former river. With the excavated mud, they built a low, sinuous embankment, effectively surrounding the Hill.

  The only way into the Hill was through the swamp on the south over the causeway or by the old township road on the north. There was also a narrow set of wooden stairs by the Nature Center that snaked up the steep eastern flank of the Hill.

  They were now more secure.

  #

  A small, rusty, green John Deere tractor jerked to a halt in the garden at the Oxbow. "Hey, Taylor." Weitzman grinned. "Look what I found." He rubbed his hand on the farm tractor's hood as though polishing it. "It may be old and not very powerful but it sure runs well. It's made farming much easier."

  "Good." Taylor noted that its appearance belied his claim. "How much land is ready for planting?"

  "There’s four acres in the Oxbow. We’re going to plant it tomorrow." Weitzman made a wry face. "We had to sacrifice a baseball diamonds for root crops. It was the only place with sandy soil. There was some bitching about that."

  "Yeah, I'll bet. What else?"

  "We’ve got a couple acres of peas, beans and corn planted just north of the Hill."

  "Where exactly?" Taylor realized he'd lost track of some of the projects.

  "Just inside the old river bend, behind the pine trees."

  "Ah, yes." Taylor nodded. "What about livestock?"

  "We're using the cows and goats to keep the approaches to the Oxbow clear. We're grazing the horses in any odd spot that we can find, away from the meadows," Weitzman said. "We want to grow hay in the meadows, so we can put it up for next winter."

  "Sounds good." Taylor frowned. "Shel, will there be enough food to last through next winter?"

  "If the harvest is as good as I hope it is." Weitzman beamed. "We might even have a surplus."

  #

  "So, you’re los Diablos, is that right?" Chris asked, looking at the three young men who sat with tied hands on a fallen tree trunk alongside the road leading to the Oxbow.

  Guards had caught Eddy and his two companions trying to sneak into the Oxbow early in that morning and subdued them after a brief struggle.

  "Sí," Eddy said. "Blade sent us."

  “Blade, eh?” Chris pulled out a hunting knife and began to play with it. "Tell me about him."

  "He heard the warehouse boys tangled with your gang."

  "If you refer to the Clan as a gang," Chris's voice took on a hard edge. "I swear I'll lose control." She held the knife close to his face. Sunlight glinted off its honed edge. "Do I make myself clear?"

  "Yes." Eddy tried to back away from the knife.

  "That's better." Chris drew the knife back. "Why did you come here? Who sent you?"

  "Blade. Y'know, el Jefe hisself," Eddy said. "He wants to know everything about this place. How many people, the lay of the land, guns, ammo an' stuff like that."

  "Really? D’you know what we’ve got?"

  "No, but he got people watching you all the time."

  Chris smiled. "I hear Blade's gang has twenty members."

  "Naw, it’s more than fifty, mebbe eighty."

  "D’you reckon he could beat us in a fight?"

  "Sure. We got that tank." Eddy looked up with a trace of a proud smile. "It’s got a big gun an’ a bad-ass machine gun, an’ carries six dudes with full auto M16s. No one gives Blade shit now he’s got the tank."

  "Where do the Diablos hang out?"

  "No se," Eddy said with a sneer. “Here an’ there.”

  "Where are the Diablos?" Chris poked him with the knife.

  "Hey, bitch, that hurt."

  "Eddy, watch your language." She raised the knife.

  "I don’ know. We Diablos jus' keep movin’."

  "Why?"

  "Food. It's getting hard to find." Eddy narrowed his eyes and cocked his head to one side as he stared at her. "Blade planned on movin' onto Berea, but he heard you got some food. He’s comin’, and he’s gonna getcha, bitch. "

  Chris made a jerking motion with her thumb. "Toss ‘em out."

  #

  "The Diablos have machine guns and artillery?" Taylor asked. Through the open door of the metal building, he saw a light mist of rain drift over the Oxbow’s newly planted fields.

  "That's what it sounds like," Chris said. "I've sent out scouts. They've seen gangs but no armored vehicles."

  "This changes everything," Taylor said. "I thought we had enough people and guns to be safe from the gangs."

  "Well," Fred said. "What d'you think we should do?"

  Taylor looked around the table at the team leaders. Even after only a short time, Taylor knew them well from the daily contact.

  "The only way to be safe from a force like the Diablos, is to keep them away from here," Clayton Nicholas said. He was an African-American engineer with a military background who’d been made a refugee by the West Side gang several weeks ago.

  "Easy to say, difficult to do." Taylor frowned.

  "Maybe we can get the Edgepark people to join us and establish a common defense," Fred said. "We help them with their defenses and they help us.”

  "They're settled and won't want to move," Weitzman said. "They're certain to fight hard for their homes."

  "True," Taylor said. "I’m sure Stolz could improve their defenses. I didn't suggest it because I want to get ours finished first. Does anyone have connections in the Edgepark area?"

  "Yes," Ted Callioux spoke in a small voice. "I know people there from when I was at Baldwin-Wallace College."

  "Ted," Taylor asked. "You want to talk with them?"

  “Yes, I suppose I can.”

  "Good. Now, Clayton, what d’you think we should do?"

  "We should have a defense-in-depth strategy," Clayton said. "If we keep our lines of internal communication short, we can flex quickly for a more effective defense. We might even sucker them into a trap. That’ll take preparation."

  "Get your ideas together," Taylor said. "Anything else?"

  "Yes," Callioux said. "There's a bunch of folk in Berea that would like to join us."

  "How many? How well d’you know them?"

  "About a
hundred. They're from the section of town where I used to live. When I went back looking for Sandy, they asked me about joining up." His voice trailed off, his eyes downcast.

  "Another hundred people. Oh, man, we've only just got everybody under a roof. Where’ll we put them?"

  "To work." Callioux's voice held a hint of defiance. "I told them we have a shelter problem. They're ready to help.”

  "Like how?" Taylor asked, his eyebrows rising.

  "They’ll bring plywood from the local lumber yard. They reckon there's about four truckloads of plywood, plus several truckloads of other lumber and building supplies. They've got construction skills." Callioux's voice strengthened. His face reddened. "What they don't have is ammo for their guns. They're defenseless."

  "All right, tell them they can come. We'll split them between the Hill and the Oxbow," Taylor said with a sigh.

  "If you don't mind, they'd like to stay together for a while," Callioux said. "I think they'd prefer the Hill, even if there's less shelter. They are willing to work."

  "Ted, they're your problem now. Keep me posted." Taylor wondered why they preferred the Hill. "Next item. Warning of impending attacks. Chris, we need more scouts. Ted, since you're from Berea, how about getting scouts in there? Wylie, take Mastick Road and points north and west." Taylor looked up from the list. "Shel, can we get horses for the scouts?"

  "Er, yes. I'll get with Chris and Wylie, too."

  "Okay, that's it. Let your people know what we're facing."

  Three squads, Taylor thought. Each with twelve people armed with high-powered rifles, and ten groups with eight adults each, with less powerful guns than our militia, against a gang with an armored vehicle. It isn’t a fair match.

  Chapter 15

  Neighbors

  "If you lie to me again, you'll eat your own cojones." Armando “Blade” Velasquez waved a bloody knife.

  Antonio Morales now knew how the Jefe of Los Diablos got his nickname. "I swear on my mother's grave I saw a tanker.”

  "Gillipolas.” Asshole. “You think I'm stupid? There ain't no gas deliveries." His knife flicked. Blood flowed.

  "I swear it went up Sheldon Road with a jeep following."