I don’t know what the other two vehicle crews talked about for the rest of the journey to Kilmer’s but, in the Sherman tank, we couldn’t stop speculating about the Long Flight Clan.

Captain Mesquida was taking no chances with that son of a bitch Kilmer. George was sure that Martin would attack if he thought he had even the slightest chance of capturing one of the Boss’s tanks. A half mile away from the estate, Captain Mesquida and Rich Jacobs dismounted to scout on foot the rest of their route to Kilmer’s. George was carrying an Enfield rifle and upon overhearing Vince’s earlier conversation with his two new Peace Officers he too had gone to Steve Monet and requested a revolver. Rich was armed with a Springfield rifle and an absolutely huge Bowie knife. They knew Kilmer had twenty-two adults that were still loyal to him, so they were cautious but not unduly worried since those adults were former employees and none were known to be military veterans, except for Kilmer.

George and Rich found two trees that had been almost completely cut through. The cut trees only remained upright because of a network of ropes tying them to the intact nearby trees. Once those ropes were severed the trees would fall and block the long driveway in to Kilmer’s estate. They also found two poorly disguised shallow and wide muddy pit traps that might cause a track to be thrown or a tank to get briefly stuck, thus giving an attacker an opportunity to douse their armored vehicles with burning oil. Or more likely cause the travel trailers to get stuck on their return trip back to the Hermit’s compound. To their relief they found no hidden charges of black powder. Rich ascertained that one of the trees had been cut improperly and would not fall across the driveway; instead it would twist and fall to the right. As for the other tree they would use Kilmer’s own ropes and a come-along from the Hellcat to pull it down in the opposite direction. But first George wanted to deal with the two pit traps using his new Earth Magic. He had seen Vince call up those rocks and he had been itching to give his own new powers a try. They had to hurry though, because even with their quieter steam engines, both men were certain that Kilmer must have already heard the three tracked vehicles.

Captain Mesquida crept up to the pit trap that was closest to the estate and put his hand on the ground while Rich kept watch. George closed his eyes and concentrated on the earth around him and the pit trap. It was fairly shallow and the trap probably wouldn’t have worked anyways but the Captain wanted to take no chances besides that they wanted to leave the estate with the trailers, which the traps might have actually damaged. It was hard for him, since it was his first attempt at magic, but he managed to subtly change the pit into a sloped and wide gentle dip in the driveway. Fifteen minutes later he did the same to the other pit and ten minutes after that they were back with the tanks.

All three armored vehicles then drove forward and stopped just before the cut trees. George and Rich got out and pulled the tree down as planned using a come-along, they both hoped that the sound of the three steam engines covered up the crashing noise caused by the falling tree.

Kilmer heard the tracks coming close to his estate and then the engine noise stopped for almost an hour. The engines finally restarted and resumed drawing closer but he was worried by the long delay. He knew that he had messed up once again but this time his money and lawyers couldn’t bail him out. He had been raised in a family of unscrupulous business men who had three mottos, never give a sucker an even break, if you are not cheating you’re not trying, and if you haven’t been sent to prison then you’ve done nothing to worry about. His political and military contacts had assured him, that what the Warnings were saying was exaggerated and that there was no way that the Earth would completely lose electricity, fossil fuel powered engines or explosives. Because he didn’t want to spend his own money in preparing properly, he had stupidly decided to put his complete trust in his contacts. However, he had hedged his bets a little and he had gathered a large group of veterans at his estate to act as cannon fodder or as canaries for any danger that might come his way.

But things hadn’t gone the way he had planned on; in fact everything had gone completely to hell. Almost half of his canaries had died in two silent night time attacks. Those still alive were getting younger, healthier and what was worse for Kilmer; they were getting back the clear quick thinking minds of their youth. His wife, mistress, children and grandchildren were terrified; then had come Clyde Jenkins with his three tanks. He had thought that they were now saved and he had proclaimed as such to his family but he had been wrong.

Instead he had learned that the man leading the group Clyde now belonged to was one of those he had personally shafted. Martin didn’t like to remember that decision because it had turned out to be a huge mistake that had cost him a lot of money. He had thought of Standish as simply being another overpaid senior employee that he could cheaply replace with someone younger, he had been wrong.

Kilmer had listened in as Clyde talked to his fellow veterans and had described the paradise that Standish had built. Running water, magic lights, extra strong twelve foot tall fences topped with barbed wired, plenty of food, toilet paper, four tracked armored vehicles, cannons and a working machine shop that was turning out even more wonders. Kilmer wanted what Standish had built and planned on stealing it as soon as he could, and Martin had a lot of experience in taking what belonged to others. He figured that once he got his hands on either the Sherman or both the other tanks, that he could just roll on back to Standish’s place and declare himself the new master there.

To Kilmer, it sounded like the tanks had paused again. Soon they might get stuck in the pit traps and he would joyfully come out, offering assistance. If that didn’t work before they left with the trailers he would drop the two trees forcing them to exit their vehicles and he would then sneak his own people into the tanks. Hopefully he wouldn’t be forced to kill Standish. Kilmer thought if he was going to set himself up as a king in this new world that he might need a court wizard and apparently Standish had the magical ability necessary for the job. Suddenly he heard the sounds of a soft crash but he wasn’t entirely sure because of the noise that the tanks were making.

George went back to talk to his new boss. “Lord Standish what do you want me to do when we enter Kilmer’s estate?”

“First off, don’t call me Lord Standish ever again. Vince or Boss are both fine and I’ve been known to answer to ‘Hey, Asshole’. The trailers at Kilmer’s estate belong to people that have freely come to me for protection, while in turn offering their services. According to Clyde who has true sight as you do too now, Kilmer tricked you and those other people into coming to his estate by telling lies and fabrications.

Now according to the Ding-Ding system, I am the head of state of my own little country. What I would like for you to do is to ascertain by questioning Kilmer why those traps were laid, if they were intended for us which is probably true. Then I would like for you to take Martin Kilmer into custody for that deliberate action, which represents a planned and premeditated attack against me and those who serve me. But only do this if you think we can do it with a minimal risk to yourself and the others here.

Once you have him in custody, you and I will talk and then we’ll decide what our next steps should be. I expect that we might keep him with us for a few days while we’re returning all of the trailers back to their rightful owners and then on our last trip we’ll return him here but you never know; things may change. I’ll of course leave the planning and execution to you and if you think we should turn around right now, then that’s what we’ll do. If you need my abilities they are of course at your disposal. I can do a pretty mean flame strike which is something like a very powerful flame thrower and I’m a fair shot. I can also function as a healer if it’s necessary but I hope it’s not. Remember the lives of the people here including your own are more important to me than Kilmer’s life.”

“I understand Vince. I’ll brief the men. Basically I’m going to instruct them to keep their guard up, keep alert, and think smart. I’ll designate sectors and areas that they’ll be focusing their attention on. We’ll look too for an opportunity to take away the weapons his people currently possess.”

George briefed his men, and I was assigned to be the medic.

Kilmer was waiting in his mansion along with everyone else; the gate was no longer manned. He saw the tanks drive up and Richard Jacobs dismount and open the gate. The Sherman stopped in the gateway while the other two vehicles drove over to the travel trailers. Martin got concerned and then furious when they didn’t even knock on his door to talk with him! They barged onto his estate like they were the lords of all they surveyed. Absolutely nobody treated him that way. While there were twenty-two adults with him, only nine of them were men and he completely discounted the women. Kilmer was an old fashioned male chauvinist and held little respect for any female. He made certain to marry a woman who was weak willed in his opinion, he had a mistress who was the same, and he only hired women with feeble personalities so in that way nothing challenged his world view. Of course nothing was perfect and some of his senior male employees had married bright, successful and assertive women but he simply ignored them. He did have a problem though with his teenage granddaughter.

I watched from the Sherman as the Scorpion and then the Hellcat each hooked up to trailers. Some of the trailers located here were of the fifth wheel variety and we would have to leave those for later. We first needed to locate a fifth wheel trailer dolly to move them. Clyde had mentioned that he might know a place where could find one. George’s plan was to goad Kilmer into action simply by ignoring the arrogant bastard. If we didn’t get him today we could always try again tomorrow. The Scorpion moved towards the gate and Jeff who was the new commander of the Sherman ordered us forward so we could hitch up to a trailer of our own. The Hellcat with its trailer parked itself about halfway to the gate.

Kilmer was beyond enraged, they were just going to drive off and not even give him the Hawken rifle that he had been promised. He gathered what he thought of as his fire team and went outside to confront the trespassers.

George had the Hellcat positioned in such a way that it could watch both the north and east sides of the mansion. He kept an eye on both doors and windows to make sure the Kilmer didn’t try anything. Captain Mesquida had been certain that Kilmer would angrily storm out when he saw that they were ignoring him but that hadn’t happened.

He saw Vince was outside the Sherman and directing it as it slowly backed up, so it could hook to a large travel trailer by the house. George took his eyes off of Vince for just a couple of seconds and went to take a quick glance at the front door of the mansion when out of the corner of his left eye he caught a flicker of movement. He felt the blood drain from his face. HOW THE HELL DID THEY GET THERE?

I was looking down and watching the tank’s hitch get closer to the tow ball on the trailer. When a shadow fell across where I was looking. The tank had already stopped, I looked up. Now how in the fuck did this happen?

Kilmer loaded his old antique coachmen’s blunderbuss. Terence, Allan, Bradley and Troy were all armed with new Hawken rifles and had their bayonets fixed. All the men were a little nervous but they were loyal men and blue screens just like Martin. So Kilmer knew that they had their priorities right and didn’t believe in any of that fair play bullshit. Terry and Allan were accountants, while Bradley and Troy were both lawyers, all four men were his employees. The group of five men took the stairs going down to the basement; Kilmer was going to teach those moronic peasants outside his home just who was the smarter man here.

Martin and his team went to the northeast corner of the mansion’s basement; there they came to what looked like an extremely large electrical panel. Kilmer hit a couple of hidden latches and whole panel box swung away from the wall. On the other side of it was an almost duplicate panel on the outside of the house. Kilmer had this secret entrance installed years ago because of some of his more questionable but perfectly legal activities. He needed a stool to climb through the two foot by three foot opening. As planned, the bushes he had his gardeners plant at this corner of his home, perfectly hid his exit. His men quickly followed him. He peeked through the bushes and saw that the watchers on both of the closer tanks were looking away for a moment.

Seeing the opportunity Kilmer led his team at light jogging pace over to the person who was ground guiding the tank. Martin gloated, he would have his hostage now and soon everything would be under his control!

Jeff Vargas had been a sergeant in Nam and had commanded and occasionally driven an M113 APC. The Sherman wasn’t as nimble in comparison but he was getting the hang of it. He was still trying to figure out why Clyde liked the Scorpion so much. Jeff, in the command hatch, was relaying instructions from the Boss to the tank’s driver, when he suddenly saw some movement that wasn’t supposed to be there. He ordered the tank to halt and turned pale at the scene that had abruptly unfolded before him. Ah, fuck!

I looked up and I found I was looking into the mouth of short piece of pipe with an inner diameter in excess of an inch, which was far too close to me. It took me a second to figure out what I was looking at, in Martin Kilmer’s trembling hands. It was an old short barreled flintlock shotgun or blunderbuss as they used to call them and I knew that at short ranges they were extremely deadly.

Kilmer began to speak and he was almost foaming at the mouth. “I’ve got you now Standish. You miserable thieving bastards thought you could come in here and simply take away all of my trailers and then just drive off because you have some old tanks, didn’t you? Well you’re not inside your tank now, are you? You are now my prisoner and you will do exactly what I say or I will blow your head clean off. You might be wearing a fancy vest but your face sure as hell isn’t protected. Now toss away that revolver you’re wearing on your hip.”

Damn it, my magnum is going to get all dirty now! I gently tossed the gun as directed but away from my foes. I sure as hell, didn’t want to get shot by my own gun. Seeing the barrel of Kilmer’s weapon pointed at me, only one solution came to mind since my nonexistent magical force shield was on the fritz. A flame strike might cause Kilmer’s weapon to fire, so I had to rely on my Earth Magic. My power was weaker in this instance for two reasons. The first being that we weren’t on my land and the second because there was no direct earth connection between me and the old shotgun, instead there was a large air gap between us. I viewed any solid materials as being part of my Earth Magic, even liquids to a slight degree but one day if I lived through this, I would have to work on learning both Water and Air Magic. My plan was to pull the shot and powder out of the blunderbuss like I had called the rocks out of ground back at my compound. The problem with that, was that Kilmer’s weapon was pointed directly at my face, so even if I started to loosen the powder and shot, at this range if he pulled the trigger it would still hurt, but it was the only game in town and I decided to play the cards that I had been dealt. The frizzen on the blunderbuss’s pan was down so I couldn’t dispose of that powder; I could only call the shot and powder loaded in the barrel.

“Now Standish you and your men are going to do everything that I say or I will kill you. Thanks for our new rifles by the way, they’re a lot better than the old antiques that I have, especially considering the bayonets. You order your men to turn off their engines and get out of the tanks, while leaving their personal weapons behind and do it now you piece of dog shit!”

I had to handle this calmly or I might get killed here and death was the one thing that I feared most in this world. Oops, I almost lied to myself because I feared canned spinach more than death and karaoke too, then there were gelatin desserts, I really hate those. Crowds, I fucking hate crowds. Hey, if I died here I wouldn’t have to go back to my now crowded house! So exactly why did I fear death, so much? I’d have to think about that. I was slowly pulling the shot and a little bit of the powder through the barrel of the old shotgun, certainly the explosive charge wasn’t as compacted as much as it had been. The patch on top of the shot was slowing things down, so I was yanking that out too.

As the saying goes dust to dust and earth to earth, if it’s solid matter then it falls under my Earth Magic’s purvey as far as I’m concerned. I decided to distract Kilmer with some polite and witty conversation, and answer his latest request.

“Fuck off Kilmer; I am not going to order anyone out of their vehicles. You might kill me and shoot one or even two of the others but then the others will blow you and your mansion to pieces.” My witticisms are astonishingly entertaining. I have to wonder why the President and the Governor have never invited me to any of their fancy soirees. I can even do card tricks.

Kilmer saw his vision go red with rage and then he saw things beginning to fall out of the barrel of his blunderbuss. Curious he began to lower it. As he started to lower it he realized what was falling out and in desperation he pulled the trigger while there were was still something in his gun.

I saw the patch fall out of the barrel but Kilmer seems to have noticed it too. He started to lower the weapon away from my face which was good. It was now aimed at my vest but it continued to lower and then it went off. I found myself moving a foot or two backwards and experiencing terrible pain in my entire pelvic region. Just another normal day in my life, instead of being kicked in the crotch, I get shot in it!

All the men in the vehicles had the same thought. “Oh my God, they shot Vince! Those bastards!” Then they opened fire which might not have been needed since Vince as he was pushed slightly backwards by the shot launched a flame strike with his right hand. That magic attack instantly killed three of the men and seriously wounded the remaining two.

Thirteen year old Melissa Kilmer watched as the man she hated most in the world confronted the men with the tanks. She was scared but she had been scared for over a month now. At first she had hoped to get some wonderful magical power that could change her life and her parents’ lives for the better but that hadn’t happened. Then it got worse as she and her parents were forced to go and live at her grandfather’s estate. Her parents were completely under his thumb and she hated Grandfather Kilmer for that. He made her father do awful things that he didn’t want to do and humiliated her mother at every opportunity. She wanted him dead! She saw her grandfather in his silly too-tight fancy dress uniform confront a man wearing jeans, a t-shirt and an armored vest like she’s seen policeman wear on television. Suddenly her grandfather shot the unarmed man and in response fire leaped from the right hand of the stranger and engulfed her grandfather and the other four men with him. She screamed and so did everyone else who was gathered at the window and watching.

Clyde had been watching the scene with a pair of binoculars one of his small crew had already disconnected the trailer and he was ready to drive the Scorpion back to aid Vince. When he saw the Boss get shot, he got his tank moving and aimed for the very large double front doors of the mansion.

Rich was cursing a blue streak, as he aimed the Hellcat’s cannon at the first floor windows on the northeast corner mansion. He was certain that Kilmer was dead but he was wondering what he and everyone else was going to do if the Boss was dead too which he probably was. As far as he knew while some other people at the compound might have some magic, Vince was the only one who was enchanting things that everyone could use.

Clyde too had seen Kilmer’s people gathered at the windows inside the northeast corner of the building. So when he crashed through the doors and he saw another wide interior doorway immediately to his left, he did a skid steer right through it and into the mansion’s large front living room. To say that the people there were terrified would be putting it mildly, to say they crapped their pants would be describing it accurately.

Bill Kilmer, the son of Martin Kilmer, put himself in front of the group gathered there. He didn’t know what he could do to protect his family but maybe if he sacrificed himself to the no doubt furious men in the tanks they might leave the others unharmed.

It’s a good thing that I had a lot of practice healing other people. The first thing I did was to block the pain and the second was to try and stop the bleeding.

DING-DING

We have a winner, yes it is TUESDAY! I’m in the money, I’m in the money, and the sky is honey.

For once, I’m not only seeing an orange screen I’m hearing the words too. It’s a man’s voice but it’s nothing special in terms of musical talent, however I’m also experiencing a strange vision of a cartoon rabbit dancing around a carrot patch while throwing golden coins about with its paws.

Well Vince or should I call you Vanessa considering you’re now missing a certain part of your anatomy. You really fucked up this time. Safety tip, don’t tell a man who is pointing a shotgun at you to fuck off. Now you might survive this if you can get your bleeding under control but so far you aren’t doing so hot. I estimate that you’ve already lost, at least a pint and a half of the red stuff, if you lose just over three pints you’ll probably lose consciousness and die since you won’t be able to fix yourself. Fix, get it, you know how you humans take your pets in to be ‘fixed,’ well you’ve just been ‘fixed’ really good. You know if you had seen a martial arts instructor when you had the opportunity to, you might have learned something and as result you might have increased your stamina which would have given you a better chance of surviving this cut to your manhood, Vanessa. But some idiot decided to rely on martial arts books and DVDs and said idiot, never even bothered to take the time to watch any of those DVDs or read a single one of those books he bought. Ooh, it actually looks like your getting the bleeding under control and you’re only down two and a half pints. In the future when you want to know your blood levels just stick a dipstick up your ass instead of getting shot.

The orange screen faded away and I saw Jeff looking down at me. I held up my right hand to signal him not to approach any closer. I needed help but only certain kinds. I most definitely did not need anyone to open my pants right now. I needed all my bits and pieces in one spot and close as possible to me. I motioned him over with my finger. He bent down over my head so he could listen to me. “Jeff you’re new but you might have already heard that I’m a healer. I’m going to need a supply of water to get my fluid levels back up and you need to wash my right hand.

I need to manipulate some things down in my pants, and my hand is far too dirty right now to safely do that. If my cock hadn’t grown so much during these last few weeks I would have taken far less damage.” I joked with him.

Clyde had backed his tank out of the house thinking it wasn’t the best idea to drive his multi-ton vehicle onto the first floor of a house with a basement. But first, he used the threat of sudden life ending violence to get all of those in the mansion to exit via the shattered front doors.

George was not amused, he checked on Vince and then he turned his attention on his prisoners. There were only five adult men left alive, two of those men were blues and the other three were greens. There were thirteen women and they were surprisingly all greens. Then there were eight children with the oldest one being a girl. She was an orange and two of other children were also oranges. The rest of the children were all greens including surprisingly enough what appeared to be the youngest child, “he must be a little hellion to be a green already,” thought George.

Captain Mesquida started giving orders to his tank crew. I noticed the Hellcat had come roaring up with its trailer and both were now parked between me and the house. I very carefully and gently stuck my hand down the front of my underwear. I needed to align and move some of my formerly attached pieces of flesh so that they would properly reconnect.

I didn’t need to see things with my eyes. I had developed something I called healer’s sight which was like a three dimensional holographic image that I held in my mind for whatever person I was currently working on. I could zoom in and easily see things at the cellular level in this image. Using it, I knew exactly where to exert my power to make a repair. It took me over an hour and a half but I got Franken-dick sort of put back together again as well the other parts in my pelvic region. I would still need to do a lot of fine repairs to my body but I had fixed worse than this on other people. So I knew that it would just take time especially what with all the nerve damage.

I called George over and he hurried to my side. “How are you doing Boss?”

“Well at least you didn’t ask me; how are they hanging?” He snorted back a laugh. “I’m sort of in one piece but I’m tired and in very delicate shape right now. I’ll need you to get a stretcher or something like it. I need to be carried and put on a bed in one of the trailers we’re moving. We still need to meet with the Long Flight Clan but we’re probably going to arrive late. What about the people here? What do you think we should do about them?”

“Well Clyde messed up their front doors but while you were healing yourself Rich found some lumber and put a patch on the mansion. I’ve spoken with all of them and truthfully, I think we should take the entire group back with us, even the blues. Kilmer was an asshole and he forced them into doing things that they didn’t want to do. All of them even his wife, mistress, son, daughter-in-law, daughter, granddaughter and his former employees are relieved that he’s dead. The man was able to spin a web that these people just couldn’t see a way out of while he was alive.”

“Okay, if that’s how you feel, I have no reason to object. Let’s get going then as quickly as possible. I don’t want to keep the Long Flight Clan waiting longer than is necessary. I’ve just expended a lot of energy in healing myself. I don’t know what food we have on hand but if you can find me something to eat, it would be great. Right now, I need protein and carbohydrates.”

I had used some of the tissue from my conveniently close fat ass to fix little Vincent. It felt really creepy while I was moving even those little tiny bits of tissue, almost like I had little worms moving beneath my flesh. What the hell am I thinking? I needed more than a few little bits of tissue to replace the missing pieces in my mighty member. I needed vast quantities of flesh from my taut Adonis like buttocks. Those are the lies I’m telling myself and I’m sticking to them.

I was gently moved into the trailer that was hitched to the Sherman, and put on a bed inside. George came through for me and he found a couple bags of turkey jerky and some snack bars for me eat. Rich appointed himself my keeper and stayed with me in the trailer for our trip. Our latest recruits were put in the Hellcat’s travel trailer and we set off. I was thankful for my skill in pain blocking during the bumpy ride.