Quaranteam - North West Ch. 23

====================================

QT:NW continues the official Spin-Off for the Quaranteam universe originally created by CorruptingPower. You do not need to have read the original series to enjoy this one, but you really do need to start with Chapters 1-4 (I really suggest you read the original though, it's great!). Fans of the original should be pleased to know CP has approved the story and the continuity.

In this chapter you can expect as a major problem and the chaos of the fallout.

Returning Dramatis Personae

House Black

- Harrison 'Harri' Black - Sheriff of Black County, 'Jason Momoa-looking motherfucker' mountain man (mixed heritage), former Army MP

- Erica LaCosta - Fiancee of Harri, Leo's sister, Italian Tattoo Artist, Dark Brunette

- Kyla Bautista - Trained dancer, Phillipino Spy, Harri's Deputy Sheriff, Raven hair

- Ivy Gauthier - Quebecoise stripper, half-tattooed, Dirty Blonde anal queen

- Vanessa Peters - Construction Forewoman, Daughter of Brent Peters the head of the construction project, Brunette

Natives

- Kara Swiftwater - Harrison's high school sweetheart that ended poorly, community leader of the local Native band, Raven hair

US Military

- Lt Col Miriam Abarbanel - Military friend of Harri's, Air Force Lt Col, Jewish heritage, Commanding Officer for Valhalla Hills construction and the Oregon Quaranteam research project

- Captain Laura Bloomberg - Air Force JAG serving as Miriam's second, Blonde

Guns of Thunder Bikers

-??? - Leader of the gang, somewhere in his mid-fifties. Served as a Marine in the Gulf War, and the early invasion of Afghanistan. Father of Kashm.

- Chuck - Young, dumb, relatively attractive biker. Dating Kashm.

-??? 'Neck Tattoo' - Neck tattoo of eagle and American flag.

- Garret - Older biker, dangerous hippy vibes.

- Kashm - Short Persian woman with an attitude, daughter of the Guns of Thunger biker boss. Big tits, hourglass figure. Dating Chuck.

Militia/Sovereign Citizens

- Big Paulson - Sovereign Citizen from the Golden Beaver group

Referenced Characters

- Abigail 'Abi' Jónsson - Harri's Personal Trainer, Co-owner of Valkyrie Falls women's athletic retreat, Icelandic Personal Trainer and Crossfit Competitor, Tall Athletically Muscular Blonde

- Danielle 'Dani' - Australian stripper, Brunette

- Josie 'Joss the Boss' Draper - Professional Wrestler, Athletically Trim Blonde

- Leo LaCosta - Harri's best friend and former roommate, Italian carpenter, Erica's brother

- Macho - Rescued daschund puppy, named for his big balls, mascot and beloved pet of House Black

- Mary Duncan - Attended high school with Harri, former cheerleader, Husband has disappeared while looking for work, left to join a 'commune' with her kids

- Sara Sigurdsdottir - Co-owner of Valkyrie Falls women's athletic retreat, Icelandic Personal Trainer and Crossfit Competitor, Tall Athletically Muscular Blonde

- Vanessa Peters - Construction Forewoman, Daughter of Brent Peters the head of the construction project, Brunette

====================================

Watching my family, and Leo's, mixed with the ladies of Valkyrie Falls as dinner was about to be served was heartwarming. After the tough day that Josie had gone through, finding out about the death of her best friend, and knowing that all of the women both in and out of my family were going through similar things, it was good to see them rallying together. That was really the only way we were all going to get through the shitstorm that was the pandemic.

"Did it go OK?" Erica asked me, sliding in to lean against me as I stood back at the edge of the cafeteria and watched as the ladies doted on both Josie and Macho. The fit blonde was holding him against her chest and smiling in a way I didn't think anyone but a puppy could make happen.

"Yeah. She just needed to feel safe," I said.

"You're good at doing that," Erica smiled. "I texted after an hour went by but you didn't respond. I just wanted to make sure she hadn't choked you out or something with one of her wrestling moves."

I snorted and shook my head. "No, nothing like that. I didn't get the text though." I patted my pockets and realised I didn't have my phone. "I must have left it in the truck. Hold on, I should get it in case there's an emergency."

"If there was, Vanessa or Miriam would reach out to me next," Erica said. "And I haven't heard anything."

"Mary or Kara might try me though," I reminded her. "Or my sister. Or the Staties."

"Go," Erica said with a little smile and a roll of her eyes. "My hero-husband."

The sun wasn't setting yet, but the trees outside the retreat centre cast deep, cool shadows across the parking lot that late in the day. The air outside had that crispness that told me we were probably going to get a good rain in the next day or so, and I figured I should probably move my murder board inside when I got back to the compound. The tarp contraption could handle the light drizzle that would appear at any moment in the Pacific Northwest, but I doubted it could take a full storm.

I found my phone in the cupholder of the centre dash right where I'd left it - seeing Kyla waiting for me when I pulled in had made me forgetful. With a sigh, I picked it up and felt it vibrate with the notification of a waiting message. I opened it as I started to walk back to the cafeteria, checking the first message.

'Harri, we're hearing multiple gunshots.'

"Fuck," I grunted, thumbing the call button. It rang as I stood stock still, every muscle in my body tensed as my chest felt like it was trying to squeeze my heart while my heart was trying to batter out of my rib cage.

It rang, and rang.

No answer.

I broke into a run.

"Kyla!" I shouted from the entryway into the cafeteria. The tone in my voice had my gorgeous girlfriend immediately looking up and around rapidly, scanning for danger, as she got up from her seat at one of the tables. The big room had gone quiet. "Erica, is your car open?" I asked.

"It should be," she said. "What's-"

I didn't have time to answer her as I sprinted back towards the parking lot. Erica's car was parked about halfway down, one row over from my truck, and I yanked open the driver door and thumbed the trunk open, then rounded the back and started pulling out the firearms that were stored there. When the girls had moved into the Falls, Sara and Abi had OK'd a few handguns to be kept inside the building, secured in Kyla's room, but had asked that the rest of the gear be kept in Erica's car. It wasn't ideal, especially if something had happened at the Falls, but it was better than nothing.

"Keys," Kyla called to me and I turned and tossed my truck keys to her. She didn't ask any questions yet - she didn't need to. She knew something bad was happening.

"Harri, what's going on?" Erica asked as she jogged out to me. A bunch of the ladies were following but holding back near the building courtyard and watching.

"Kara started hearing gunshots two hours ago," I said. "And they've been getting closer to her." I slung the two MP5s that Miriam had gifted to me over my shoulders, scooping up the loaded mags that went with them, and then picked up the wooden box that held the four flash grenades and two smoke grenades that Miriam had sworn she would kill me over if I used them without proper need.

"Fuck," Erica said, her face going a little white. I knew she was feeling guilty that she'd downplayed me not having my phone. And calling me to help with Josie in the first place. If I hadn't been here, I could have been that much closer when Kara had first texted. "Harri-"

I turned and kissed her. It shocked her, and she didn't have much time to respond. I didn't have a hand free to pull her to me tightly like I wanted. "I love you," I said. "I'll be careful." Then I turned and jogged towards my truck where Kyla already had the tailgate open and the safe compartment under the bed unlocked as she was pulling on her bulletproof vest. I'd swapped out the lighter ones for the heavy ones after the Raider incident.

"Ivy!" I called, and she came running for me. I set down the crate of grenades and the mags I was carrying and turned in time for her to leap into my arms. She kissed me fiercely. "I love you, and we'll be careful," I promised her just like I had Erica. "I need you to do me a favour and keep everyone calm, OK? It's trouble on the Rez, not near here. Can you do that for me,mon coeur?"

"I will,mon amour," she promised, holding my face in both hands for a moment and then kissing me again briefly. "Now go and rescue her."

"It's-"

"It's about her," Kyla broke in. "You would do this for anyone, dear, but you wouldn't be running on pure adrenaline if it wasn't for her."

I had to swallow hard as I started putting my own bulletproof vest on. When I was finished Erica had joined us and she pulled the side velcro extra tight. "You kiss me like that and don't even let me say anything?" she demanded.

"Sorry, babe," I said. "I'm in a bit of a rush."

"Then get your ass moving, cowboy," she said, moving past me and opening the driver's door for me. Kyla and I slammed the tailgate shut and piled into the front along with our M4s and MP5s. It was a bit much and we had to do some shifting, but I wanted as much firepower as I might need.

"Erica," I said through the open window after I turned over the truck engine. "Ivy is going to handle calming everyone down. I need you to be a lot quieter and get Dani and Leo to keep an armed watch. Nothing should happen anywhere near here, but I'll be able to focus more if I know you three are being vigilant."

"It's done," Erica nodded. "Now go."

I reversed the truck out of my parking spot and turned towards the driveway, already thumbing the remote to open the gate.

"What do we know?" Kyla asked me. I handed her my phone and she quickly unlocked it, grimacing as she started scanning through the messages. "First heard shots two hours ago. Semi-regular timing. A few outbursts. An hour ago they realised the shots were getting closer. She tried calling a few times after that." Kyla stopped and swallowed. "Did you read all of these?"

"Just the first couple," I grimaced. I yanked the steering wheel hard and the rear tires spat gravel as I veered onto the highway. I flipped the lights but not the sirens and pressed the gas to the floor.

"Thirty minutes ago she said they left the house to investigate and found a convoy of trucks one street over. Men were going door to door, no uniforms and not from the Rez. The gunshots were coming from inside the homes. The men were- Fuck, Harri. The men were carrying out valuables and supplies, along with women and children."

I had to force myself to suck in a breath.

"Call them again," I said.

Kyla tried but there wasn't an answer. She went back to the texts. "They went back to the house but weren't sure if they should try to fortify it or if they should try to run and hide. That was the last message."

I punched the centre of the steering wheel hard enough to hurt my knuckles, and the bleat of a honk wasn't nearly as satisfying a sound as I wanted to make.

"Call Miriam," I said.

The truck speaker system rang twice before she picked up. "Hey, Harri. Can I call you back in-"

"I need a heavy QRF immediately to the High Hills Chinook reserve. I am en route and have actionable intelligence that the domestic terror group who struck Valhalla Hills is on-site and actively engaged in acts of ethnic cleansing including executions and kidnapping of an unknown number of civilians focusing on females and minors."

"I-" Miriam stuttered, clearly caught off guard. Not that I could blame her, but I'd worded it as best I could to give her as much impetus to act as possible. "Clear out," she ordered someone in whatever room she was in using the sort of harsh tone that demanded immediate action. Then she was shouting, though it was muffled and I had to guess she'd pressed her phone to her chest for a moment before it cleared up again. "Repeat actionable intelligence," she said, her voice heavy.

"Eyes-on report as of-" I glanced at Kyla.

"Twenty-three minutes ago," Kyla filled in.

"I am en route with one additional operator, but a witness reports a 'convoy' of civilian vehicles in use. Unknown number of hostiles, but positive presence of small arms in use."

There was a long moment of silence over the phone, and then Captain Bloomberg was speaking instead of Miriam. "Who is your eyewitness?" she asked.

"Kara Swiftwater, a former member of the Reserve Leadership Council. And Gertrude Swiftwater, a former member of the Reserve Police Department," I said.

"Are you sure-"

"Yes, I'm fucking sure!" I growled. "This isn't a stunt."

"You're asking us to deploy the Air Force on US soil, Harri," Laura said tightly.

"Women and children getting rounded up, and the sick being shot in their homes," I said, trying to keep from shouting. "They witnessed it."

"Why is the report over twenty minutes old?"

"Because I forgot my fucking phone in my fucking truck and missed their texts and calls while I was trying to comfort a woman who had lost her best friend today," I broke, shouting. "And now I'm another... fifteen minutes out at least from reaching them." I was driving like a fucking maniac. If the road had been slick, or there had been any traffic whatsoever, there likely would have been an accident.

There was a long minute of silence and I had a feeling we'd been put on mute. Kyla reached over and put a hand on my arm, squeezing it as I gripped the steering wheel tightly. She didn't tell me to calm down, didn't ask me to slow down. She just let me know she was there.

"Harri, I'm sending you the off-duty Airmen from the site security detail," Miriam cut back in. "I can't get anything else to you faster than that. The next best I can get you is scrambling a unit of the National Guard. I'll have an ETA on them ASAP, but they'll be coming in behind you and Ineed to know if I should call them off. If this intel is off we can't have the National Guard storming a reserve, Duo Halo outbreak or not. It'll be all our fucking heads if that happens."

"Understood," I grunted. I knew what she was saying was true. Evenif this was fake, and the National Guard rolled up and Feather's crazy cult was still alive and opened fire on them and everyone died, there would be no covering it up. Someone, somewhere, would find out purely from the mobilisation.

But it wasn't fake. Kara would go to almost any length to try and help her people, but this wasn't a false flag report. The fact that there was a big part of me that wanted to pull up in front of her house and see her smirking, knowing she'd pulled one over on the US military and forced their hand, didn't help.

"Do I have permission to track your phone to give my soldiers your live location?" Miriam asked.

"I figured you alreadywere tracking me," I said, managing a slight smirk through my currently permanent grimace.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Miriam said. "Oh, look, the tracking kicked in really fast."

"What sort of ETA on the Airmen?"

"They'll be... seven to eight minutes behind you," Miriam said, and I could tell she was communicating with Captain Bloomberg off the phone as well.

"How many?" Kara asked.

"Seven. One military jeep, one civilian panel van," Miriam said.

"Alright. I need the phone back," I said. "See if I can get a hold of my asset."

"Be careful," Miriam said. "And godspeed."

Kyla hung up for me. "Everyone tells you to be careful," she said. "No one ever tells me to be careful."

"It's because I'm a bigger target, hon," I said.

She smirked and tried calling Kara again but it rang through to her voicemail.

"Keep trying," I said, and she did.

We whipped past landmarks at reckless speeds. "Five minutes out," I said.

Kyla texted that to Miriam, who would forward it to her team. Then, without asking me, she fiddled with my phone a bit and then music started blaring from the speakers of the truck.

The chaos of a fast guitar. A guttural shout. The kick in of fast rhythm guitar and smashing drums. Another scream, isolated, and then thick and almost operatic vocals over a speeding rhythm.

She'd picked perfectly. Not trying to calm down my adrenaline, and nothing too on the nose. The song transitioned into almost a groove, then picked up again quickly. The organised chaos of the song was a match to how I was feeling. To the spiking of my emotions, but bringing me back to that central groove that let me think clearly. It was the same way a firefight was going to go. Moments of extreme violence interspersed with strange, almost uncomfortable calm.

I drove through the song, and it descended into its final driving beat that had me bobbing my head lightly as I glared out the front window. The final beat cut off into silence.

"God, I love you," I said.

"I've got another one," Kyla said.

I shook my head. "We're here."

The cars that had been blocking the entrance and exits of the barricade looked like they had been smashed aside and we drove right through. I flicked off the overhead lights, not wanting to warn anyone that we were coming.

The smart thing to do would be to get out and hoof it on foot. It would give us more forewarning as we came up on anyone, and if there was a caravan worth of people we'd probably hear them. But in the last few weeks, I'd been making choices based on need, not what was smart. Speed and violence had been serving me a lot better than trying to be sneaky and smart. Every time I was cautious, someone got hurt. Oftentimes it was me.

Every time I went with my gut, shock and awe worked wonders.

I rolled down my window, trying to hear anything, as I jumped the truck over the low grass berm that separated the main road into the reserve from the residential area, saving us a minute of driving around to the main entrance and skipping the small 'downtown' near the burned-down community centre. Kyla checked her MP5, racking the slide, and then rolled down her window to listen as well.

My head was on a swivel as we sped past roads. I was looking for signs of the caravan. The number of bodies around had grown over the past four days, dotted here and there, and the abandoned vehicles made it hard to be sure sometimes of what I was looking at. Still, I wasn't seeing anything like the caravan, or worse.

I bypassed Kara's street, riding the cross-street down to the end to try and find the fucking trucks, but I didn't hear anything. No gunshots, no engines, no shouting. No screams. I pulled us back around and peeled onto Kara's street before realising that I didn't know what her house looked like from out front. I had to mentally count about how many lots in she was and pulled up in front of a house that looked right.

Kyla and I burst out of the truck. She had her MP5 up and scanning while I defaulted to the M4 as I checked back behind us. I could hear my heart in my ears and feel the sweat on my brow. No movement. There were a couple of bodies two lots over, one next to the other, and I grit my teeth.

I looked at Kara's house and saw that the front door was kicked in. "Going in," I said quietly to Kyla. I could hear her following me with quick, sure steps as I approached the gaping open front door. "Kara," I called. "It's Harri. Gerty, Tanaya, friendly-friendly-friendly. I'm coming in."

The inside of the house was ransacked. I could see bits of Kara's life spread out in shattered fragments of physical memories. Colours she favoured, keepsakes I could see her collecting. A picture of her and her parents on the wall, askew but unbroken.

No blood, no bodies in the front room. "Clear," I said, pushing in further. "Hold the door."