North of Springville

By Justin Rowland

The planet had been utterly transformed. Casualties from natural and man made calamities were of a biblical proportion. There were no longer any nations. There were no longer any laws of men. The world had become a wild place.

Now, two generations later, the descendants of those that survived continue to carry on. Among them is Jedidiah. A man of steadfast faith, he enjoys a communion with his God that few come to know. One who prefers the solitude of the wilderness, he strives to live in peace with others. But when those that he loves are confronted with the horrors of human trafficking, he is forced to employ the skills of war that have been honed by the realities of an unforgiving world. His faith grows and his tactics shine as he endeavors to do what he knows to be right. Their reign of terror must be stopped. And Jedidiah would give his life to stop it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456608293

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Chapter 1

The wind crept up the canyon wall as Jedidiah neared its edge. He could hear the screams on the wind, but could not discern whether they were screams of play or panic. On his belly now, he crawled the last few inches to gaze out over the lowlands below his perch, high on the cliffs. Even though the cabin was well over a half-a-mile away, the flames told the story. By the light of the fire combined with the bright moon overhead, he could see frantic figures moving about the burning structure in the distance. Jedidiah shook his head thinking how preventable this was had someone been more mindful of the fire. At that, he lifted himself up a few inches, backing away from the edge to disappear back into the darkness, when he stopped short for a better look. He had surveyed this valley several times before as he passed through the territory. And, though he had never made himself known to them, he knew that the cabin was occupied by a family of five. Why then did he see so many figures? He couldn’t be certain, but he thought he counted at least fifteen people moving around the burning cabin and surrounding out-buildings. He continued to cautiously back away from the edge before raising himself up to a crouching position. Once he was well clear of the cliff and into the tree line, he stood up and made his way back to his pack that was stashed in the dark of the forest. The thick canopy overhead blocked the moonlight, but he found his binoculars with sure hands and, turning back to the cliff’s edge, he made his way back down with the same meticulous care he had used in his first approach. Bringing the binoculars to his eyes, he could see that this wasn’t just the results of a poorly tended fire. These were not just screams of panic, but screams of terror. He could see that the man he knew to be the husband and father had his hands bound and was hanging upside down from the front porch as the house burned down around him. A handful of men stood over the rest of the family watching him squirm and scream as the flames licked his body. While the family screamed and the men laughed, the burning man’s wife suddenly lunged from the ground striking one of the men in the head with a rock she had gripped firmly in her hand. She grabbed the wounded man’s scattergun as he fell to the ground and with lethal precision put her husband out of his misery. Instantly, one of the other men shot her dead. Jedidiah watched as the flame exploded from the muzzles, waiting for the report of the weapons he knew would follow. And as the crack of the shots reached his ears, his body began to react.

Within seconds, he had his pack on and was moving toward the homestead. Given the terrain, he figured he could close the distance within ten minutes and, as he moved through the trees and underbrush, he began to do a mental check of his combat load. He knew he had a full thirteen-round magazine in his side arm and two full thirty-round magazines for his rifle. That could hardly be called a combat load in terms of ammunition, but he’d have to make do. Jedidiah had a habit of routinely touching his sheathed knife as he moved to ensure it stayed put, so he knew it was right where it belonged. He began to run through the picture in his mind of what he had just seen. He remembered seeing approximately four or five men standing around the surviving family, and the rest seemed to be preoccupied with the out-buildings. Though he was outnumbered, he hoped to use the numbers to his advantage and all of the activity as concealment.

The sounds grew louder as Jedidiah closed in. He knew he was compromising noise discipline for speed, but he moved with such purpose that only a trained ear could have differentiated his movement from the sounds of the night. He spoke softly as he closed in upon the scene. Father, I could use some help here. A suppressor would be great. And with that prayer, he reached the tree line. With one movement, he crouched while letting his pack slide off to one side. From the shadows of the forest, he looked out over fifty yards of plowed field that separated him from the flurry of activity. He pulled out his binoculars once more to get another look. As he scanned the property, he began to take deeply controlled breaths to lower his heart rate. The main barn lay between him and where he’d last seen the rest of the family. The burning cabin on the opposite side of the barn worked well to silhouette their movements. The bulk of the raiding party was hard at work loading their mules, horses, and dogs with food from the family’s root cellars and barn. They took everything from bags of grain to jars of canned vegetables. He could see now that there were men and women and they handled the food as though it was a valuable commodity. He could easily begin to pick off the bad guys with his rifle from a safe and concealed location, and had he been able to confirm that the children were dead, he would have chosen that method. But if he began to kill the bandits while the children were still alive, he feared it would complicate matters. Time was of the essence. Several minutes had already passed since he began his descent from the hills above. If he hoped to save the children, and if they weren’t already dead, he needed to move.

He pulled his hood low and walked into the action like he belonged there. He had no way of knowing the location of the children. He could only assume they would still be in the vicinity where he last saw them. He continued to be especially concerned for the eldest daughter. Judging by the behavior of these raiders, a teenage girl would surely be raped, but as horrible as that may be, it might be enough to at least keep her alive. The two younger boys, he half-expected, might already be dead.

He heard no other shots as he approached the nearest structure, but he did not under-estimate the brutality of this band of thieves. He was well within the danger zone now and, nearing the barn, his peripheral vision picked up some movement against the barn wall just feet from where he was. There, crouched in the dark, was a woman with a jar of canned vegetables. She had apparently slipped around the corner to enjoy her stolen spoils while the others continued loading. Greedily, she devoured the jar’s contents with a long gun lying in front of her on the ground. A split second later she looked up from her sinful feast and saw Jedidiah. She shot him a glance of anger and disgust for interrupting her meal, but that expression was immediately replaced with one of surprise as she realized that this man was walking in from the dark and she did not know him. As she filled her lungs with air to sound the alarm and reached for her gun, Jedidiah stepped on her rifle while pulling his knife from its sheath, driving his blade through her throat. He felt the blade glance off her spinal cord as the tip exited the back of her neck, sticking into the barn’s wall. While she gargled and convulsed, he scanned his surroundings for additional threats. Confirming that he had not been compromised, his focus shifted back to the woman. With what he could now identify as green beans all over his hand, he withdrew the knife and wiped it and his hand on the back of her shirt. He immediately searched her for anything useful. In her right front pocket, he found his own treasure––fingernail clippers. He smiled to himself and prayed aloud as he put them in his own pocket. Nice… Father, I appreciate that.

His attention then turned to her weapon. It was a .22 rifle without any shells. He dragged her body as close to the barn as he could, and laid her parallel with the wall. He hoped this would help to conceal her in the dark. Because it added nothing to his combat effectiveness, he laid the .22 tightly against the body and, looking up, he noticed numerous knot holes in the barn wall, allowing him an unobstructed view of everyone inside the barn. The light was dim, but the fire fully engulfed the house providing ample illumination to get a closer look at the unsuspecting raiders. He counted twelve men and women in a flurry of excited movement as they ransacked the barn. Their weapons ranged from AK-47s to crossbows and everything in between. There was no way of knowing if they all had the ammunition and skill to effectively deploy their weapons, but Jedidiah had stayed alive long enough to learn that handling everyone like an expert killer would lessen his chances of being taken by surprise.

Just then, shots began to sound. Everyone in the barn scattered for cover as what sounded like a squad of men began shooting at them. Though momentarily confused at this latest development, Jedidiah immediately recognized this as an opportunity to locate the children. Crouching low, he began to make his way around the side of the barn until he could see the cabin. Through the ricocheting rounds and yells of the bandits he began to make sense of what had happened. Apparently, the family had a cache of ammunition hidden inside their home that the raiders had not discovered, and as the heat from the fire grew, the rounds began to discharge. Judging by their actions, most of them had not figured this out and thought they were under fire from the tree line. Some shot aimlessly into the dark while others hid. The men closest to the burning house, however, knew exactly what had happened and simply laid down behind a small stand of trees a little further away from the cabin. They dragged the now half-naked girl with them and left the two boys to fend for themselves. As soon as the boys saw that their captors had abandoned them, they ran into the dark. The brothers looked to be pre-teen and as they disappeared into the forest, Jedidiah turned his attention to the girl. Being dragged by one arm, it was obvious to Jedidiah that she was unconscious. He assumed that she had been knocked out while struggling to get free from the men who were raping her. The discharging rounds of the burning cabin coupled with the length of open ground he would have to clear to get to the stand of trees forced Jedidiah to backtrack around the backside of the barn and come up from behind. As he rounded the corner where he had just hidden the dead woman’s body, he prepared himself for another confrontation in case someone had stumbled onto her while trying to find cover. But, thankfully, he encountered no one. He had a small window of opportunity to recover the girl and did not want to waste time with anyone else.

Nearing the other end of the barn, he stopped short of the corner. He knew that the stand of trees would be just beyond it and wanted to see exactly what he was up against before committing himself to action. Using the corner of the barn to maximize his concealment, he peered carefully around it into the trees. Given the circumstances, he couldn’t ask for better positioning. At only twenty or so yards away, he was behind and to the left of the two men and the girl. The men were on their stomachs, while the girl, still appearing unconscious, was on her back.

Well, Father…, he prayed, I don’t guess it’s gonna get any better than this.

Just then, one of the men began to climb on top of the unresponsive girl. His intentions were obvious. At that, Jedidiah broke cover and began to move toward the trees at a deliberate and steady pace. He brought up his M4 from the low ready and placed its front sight post on the back of the man’s head. Squeezing the trigger, he sent the round home. Before the man’s body had fallen limp onto the girl, he sent a second round under the other man’s left arm and into his heart. Neither man knew what hit him.

This last action left Jedidiah exposed to the front side of the barn and vulnerable. He instinctively pivoted to his left, rifle at the ready, to scan this danger area he had not yet cleared and, as he did, he locked eyes with another man who froze with shock at what he had just witnessed. The man attempted to raise his weapon, but Jedidiah cut him down with two shots to the chest. Just as smoothly and quickly as he turned to clear the front side of the barn, he withdrew to find the girl.

Ammunition was still cracking off from the house fire as he made his way to her and pulled off the dead man’s body. Planning to toss the little girl over his left shoulder, he saw that her face was covered in thick dark blood. At first glance, Jedidiah assumed it was a combination of the blood from the man who had been shot above her along with some of her own blood when she was struck unconscious. But the flickering light of the burning cabin revealed that she had been shot in the back of the head. The exit wound had caused severe disfigurement to her face. There was no way to know at what point she had been fatally shot. Whether it had been done by one of the men or by one of the rounds discharging in the fire, Jedidiah could not tell. He could only hope that the men had not violated her until after she was dead, but he suspected she had been raped before and after.

With a seamless transition of attention, he looked up to where he last saw the two boys running into the woods just a few minutes earlier. He wondered if they were just inside the tree line not knowing what to do next, or if they had kept on running. Whichever it was, he felt compelled to find them. This was a wild and unforgiving land, and he knew their chances of survival were not good. Jedidiah looked down at the girl one last time and folded the torn pieces of her blouse back over her bare chest. Still holding his rifle ready with his right hand, he placed his left on her heart, fighting the urge to kill the rest of the raiding party. Below the thick firming blood on her chest, he felt a small solid object. As he picked it up through the pooling blood, he could see it was a small wooden cross secured to her neck by an old shoe lace.

His breath gave way to a passing quiver as he heard the Lord speak to him, Jedidiah, even in this, I AM sovereign. Though it did not put his righteous anger to rest, he knew he had to look to the boys. He, however, was in the middle of the homestead, surrounded by the unknowing raiders and trying not to be shot by the indiscriminate rounds still going off. But even so, with great care and respect, Jedidiah took time to remove the necklace from around her neck. He figured she’d want her little brothers to have it rather than it being found and used as barter by those who murdered her family.

Quickly, he looked to the two dead men. It was now muscle memory to thoroughly search the dead for useful items and Jedidiah did this without fail when the situation allowed. Normally, he would consider every item found on the dead, including articles of clothing. He didn’t have the time for that now and focused on weapons and ammunition. He rolled the