The dead men hadn’t moved yet. John’s whereabouts remained a mystery to Jared and Stephani.
“Where is he?” Stephani whispered, the strain in her voice reminding Jared of his own worries.
“Never know with that guy. He might be lying low, or maybe he took off to make sure there wasn’t more of them.” Jared looked over his shoulder at her and shrugged. He truly had no idea what John was up to.
After John laid waste to the three criminals, he sprinted out the back of the house he used for his ambush position. He circled quietly around the block, giving the area around the dead bodies a wide berth. He stopped every few seconds to listen for any sign of additional threats, but heard none. He was stunned at Jared’s improvisation in regard to the whistling. At first hearing the whistling, John and the others took up defensive positions, preparing to defend their stronghold should it be discovered.
Once the whistler passed their position, John went out into the early morning darkness and performed some scouting. That was when he identified three potentially unfriendly men moving past Solar Green. They were uninterested in the business, which was when John remembered the signals the group the day before used against them. Once John transitioned to three whistles of his own and Jared started back towards him, John was dead sure he knew who was doing the whistling.
When he’d seen Jared and Stephani pass his position, he was elated. He hadn’t long to wait before the three men came skulking through the early morning darkness, and based on the manner in which these men moved, John had no problem ending their lives. The recon mission took a little longer than John anticipated, causing him to think twice about just walking up to Jared’s position. Jared was almost certainly wound up after whatever he’d been through, and John wasn’t in the mood for a blue-on-blue shootings this morning.
When John finished and was thoroughly satisfied the only threats were lying in the street dead, he whistled three short blasts. He was back at the house he’d shot the three men from when Jared stepped cautiously out onto the sidewalk and waved a raised rifle. John stepped out and motioned silently for the other two to move to his location.
Jared had to refrain from hugging John as the two came together.
“What the fuck, bro, that was genius.” John beamed at the younger man.
“I was hoping you’d understand. They’d been following us for a while, and I didn’t want to bring them back to the solar store, so that was all I could think of doing,” Jared said through pursed lips.
John was smiling as he shook his head in disbelief; then his eyes caught Stephani’s feet. “Ha, someone got themselves some new scoots,” he exclaimed.
“We got a bunch of stuff, not just for us girls—toothpaste, stuff like that,” Stephani said as she looked down at her already dirty shoes.
The group was silent as Stephani and Jared stared down at the fallen men’s bodies. John glanced nervously at Stephani, not wanting to be judged for this horrific act of violence. The woman did not seem bothered by the carnage in the way John was worried she would be, so he set about emptying the men’s weapons. Two of the men carried handguns, while the third man carried the shotgun. John emptied all the firearms, then smashed the shotgun by placing it against the curb and stomping it with his boot.
The weapon’s stock snapped, and the action was left moderately warped. Next John disassembled both handguns and began throwing the smaller pieces into the surrounding area. A firing pin and spring went onto a nearby roof, while the slide off the same pistol was flung down the storm drain. The process took John all of about two minutes before all three weapons were rendered useless. After disposing of the weapons, John stowed all the ammunition the men carried in their packs. There wasn’t much or he would have asked Jared to carry some.
The bodies were covered in blood, stopping John from pillaging their belongings too much more than for weapons and ammunition. He figured if the men were out in the middle of the night preying on the weak, they probably didn’t have much to begin with. Sifting through these men’s blood-soaked clothing and then having to smell the coppery scent of their blood until he was able to find a place to wash did not appeal to John much.
“Let’s go. I want to get back and hear what the hell happened to you two. Jeez, man, you guys were only supposed to be gone for a few hours. I thought they got you.” John shot the two a devilish look and smiled.
“Who is they?” Stephani questioned in puzzlement.
“Them, sister, the assholes out there doing all the bad. There’s us and there’s them.” John chortled as he pinwheeled before moving up the street.
“Not all of ’em,” Jared quipped. “We actually had dinner with a nice family last night.”
John stopped in his tracks, then whirled on his heel. “You what?” he asked, craning his neck in an overexaggerated motion like he hadn’t heard Jared right and was trying to place his ears closer to the source of this inconceivable information.
Jared didn’t stop walking, continuing right past John, a smirk creeping into the corners of his mouth. “Yeah, home-cooked dinner, really unbelievable—and we had some sort of punch, red punch, maybe cherry or—” He turned to Stephani. “You remember what flavor it was?”
Stephani heaved her shoulders up so they nearly made contact with her ears. “It was red, that’s for sure, maybe raspberry or mountain berry—you know, it might have been watermelon. I
