Ringing

After a night without incident, I was awoken by Jake coming in the front door of the sunroom. I found myself on what had turned out to be a La-Z-Boy sectional. In my drugged out haze, I didn't quite recognize as something more than a thing available to receive my ass, and, thankfully, the rest of my body. The blanket on top of me was warm, and miles beyond what I'd had in the barn over the last few days. For a moment I was able to derange myself into thinking I was just staying at a friend's house.

I felt the cool breeze from door blow in, and was snapped back to reality. I was reminded of the frost warning that'd caused enough concern to bring me inside. Looking over at the door, I saw Jake, who had slung his SKS across his back, and pulled down his gaiter to shoot me a toothy grin.

"G'morning," he says, "Great morning out there. Really fresh. I see the appeal."

His white Champion sweats were now streaked with brown, grey, and other signs of a romp through the woods overnight.

I give a barely audible noise of acknowledgement, then I pulled myself upright to take stock of the situation, as Jake disappeared through the doorway on the left.

The farmhouse, as I saw from the outside, was a modest bungalow. I was in a sunroom that led out to a large screened in deck that I couldn't see from the back of the house where the barn was. Looking around, I could see nails and hooks in the wall from where the previous residents would have hung photos.

From the noise of plates and cuttlery, I could tell that I was next to the kitchen, and after getting up, I decided to make myself known to my captors.

Following shortly after Jake, I took a look to my left and saw a long hallway, leading to what I assumed was a few bedrooms and at least one bathroom. In the hallway I saw Peter awkwardly pulling his oversize belt buckle into place while trying to negotiate his arms around his plate carrier, then zipping his fly, followed by him wiping his hands on his calves.

To my right I saw a larger open room with few more of the Forceys digging into some food. Jake walked back towards me from the far side of the kitchen and through to the larger room with a bowl of Froot Loops and a spoon. Travis was standing in the off to the side, holding his plate, and eating the familiar egg patties I'd had every so often for the last week as a 'Travis treat' when he'd have the morning shift. While obstensibly egg-adjacent, the texture was always weird.

Richard stood by a Proctor Silex air fryer, which was sitting open, where Travis had left a couple more egg patties, presumably for me.

Richard reached down and retrieved one of the rubbery yellow discs. He looked me in the eye as he bit into it, drawing a sizable piece into his mouth and chewing.

Without breaking eye contact, he twisted his face into a sneer.

"We fed you... this? This is a damn crime. Travis!" Richard shouted, after spitting the piece of yellow egg patty out into a napkin, "Get me two more eggs and the margarine from the fridge. When I ask you to feed our guests, I expect you to abide by the Geneva convention at least. Jesus."

I hear a mix of chuckles from the next room over.

"They're fine to me," Travis says to this, "I ate them, and I can make like 4 of them in the Air fryer at a time in like a three minutes."

"That's the problem with your generation, no appreciation for true simplicity, mistaking it for convenience," Travis handed over the eggs. "Good lord."

"I suppose you're going to think the Cini-Minis are– "

"An abomination against God, that's right."

Scraping a bit of Imperial margarine from the tub, he tapped it into a saucepan with a sunshine yellow spatula. Setting it on a low flame, he then cracked two eggs into a bowl, mixing them together with a fork, added salt and pepper, then poured mixture into the saucepan. With the spatula, he slowly stirred the eggs together, out of my line of sight, reminding me of a magician making hassenfeffer in a top hat.

I stand in the din of the morning, overhearing bits of conversation. It was payday. A few guys were buying things for a video game they were playing that I didn't catch the name of. A couple of the guys were talking about how to get a canoe and go fishing in the alkalized rivers in the hopes of catching something more than mercury poisoning.

I wouldn't do it, but live your life, I guess.

Richard scraped the eggs out on to a plate for me, and handed it over with a fork. "Here, at least we can send you off with a decent belly full of food. Especially after your greatest shits, so to speak." Richard smiled at his own joke.

"Send me off?"

My first bite of Richard's eggs hit bottom and I suddenly feel much better about life.

"We got clearance overnight to drop you at the Roxham forward base which is a couple hours out of here. We need to take the way around the city, which is rougher according to intel, but business is business, so it's only likan extra 15 minutes on the back roads. We'll also avoid checkpoints that way, too. I'll get Trav, Pete, and Joshua to take you up."

He paused.

"Listen, if you ever find your in need of an upstanding and Christian oriented PMC yourself," he trailed off as he reached into his pocket, "We're on Telegram, Signal, and you can send us an email on Proton."

He extended his hand with a business card.

I stuck the card in my pocket.

Unsure how to feel now that I'd finally had a comfortable night's sleep, a decent meal, and a sales pitch, I just stood there, gobbling up my eggs, with Richard's business card in my pocket. My eyes were still barely open, not from the dilaudid but from another morning without caffeine and going on a week since I was last able to take my stims.

After once again processing everything that'd happened since I left for my parents place a few days ago, we got ourselves together. Having crossed some kind of trust threshold, I was allowed to sit in the back of the late model Ford Bronco with Peter, uncuffed. I sat on the passnger side behind Travis, while Joshua, who I'd only met a few times, took the wheel.

After about a half hour on the road, we turned down a rural highway and into open farm land, passing the occasional billboard reading "Jésus Oui", "Qui est Jésus?" and "Marcher Avec Jésus por la vie éternelle", which Peter reads aloud as though it's one who marches, rather than the French verb for, essentially, the same thing.

"Glad to see this place isn't totally without morality," Travis says, "Even though it is French." He chuckles once again at his own joke and looked back towards the windshield.

The next thing I remember is the side of my face being in pain and a ringing in my ears, the vibration from my chest indicating I was struggling to inhale with the wind knocked out of me, Wheezing in precious air, the motions of my body told me that I was coughing after that. Then I felt the side of my left leg ignite with pain next, followed by my vision fading back in.

I could smell smoke and as my vision started to sharpen, I saw the driver's side of the Bronco completely anihilated, debris strewn all over the road, the farm field I was standing in.

My hearing was starting to come back a little through the high pitched ring, and I could hear my own moan as I looked down to seea large string of snot and saliva pouring out of my face and on to the rough soil, sill on my hands and knee.

I looked up to see Peter, laying prone a meter or two away from me, his legs completely shredded by pieces of the Ford Bronco below the knee, so much so the that the bone and viscera were fully visible, which was the last thing I saw before I fell back on to my side, and closed my eyes in agony.