American Apocalypse IV - Heartland - Chapter 3

He passed the binoculars to Ricky who took a look. He handed them back to Loco and said "Looks like a checkpoint of some sort."

Loco replied "Yeah. You see the flag?"

"Flag? Hand me them binoculars again." Loco passed them back to Ricky. "Yeah. Okay. I got it." He held the binoculars to me. I took them and scanned back and forth. Lucky the wind was blowing lightly. The flag unfurled enough in the breeze for me to get a glimpse of the device sewn to the white cloth. "Y'all see whats on that flag?" I was looking at Loco when I asked. "Not really. It ain't the star spangled banner. That's for sure." Ricky added. "Yeah. That's got to be something else." He laughed and said. "Maybe it's the local warlord."  I didn't laugh. "Yeah. Probably. I don't like the watchtower." There was a platform built on top of a two story building that had a lookout with a rifle on it. "That could be trouble" Ricky observed.  I agreed with him. "He does have a couple blind spots once you are inside of town." I pointed them out to them. They were trying to wall the main area in with dead cars. So far they had only managed a 100 foot section.  Half of that had been covered in dirt. Somewhat.  It did not look to impressive.

 I told them "Lets sit tight here. See what happens for a bit. Spend the night. Look at them again tomorrow. I want silence now until tomorrow. No cooking either." I told them the watch schedule and sat down and began cleaning and sharpening my weapons. I also had to figure out how we were going to do this.

The flag had a cross and something else emblazoned on the white field. It probably meant Christian milita types. I wanted to figure out some cool strategy to do this instead of just showing up. Something more military. Something more Max like. I couldn't think of anything other than show up and if it got weird, well, kill them all. I watched the village as darkness came upon us. I saw the light of a couple lanterns for awhile glowing through windows. Lantern light was different than real light from a light bulb. It glowed more than it illuminated. I shrugged, and thought to myself "I was what I was." I told myself "Tomorrow we would go down and say "Hello." After that it was see what happens." I got up, stretched , and went to relieve Ricky of the watch.