Hostile Fire (Fire from the Sky #7)

Post-Apocalyptic Fiction by N.C. Reed Clay Sanders has learned a great deal since the world stopped working. One of those lessons is that while he may run out of everything else, especially patience, he never seems to run out of problems. His grandfather, who believed him when Clay came home with a fantastic tale of coming destruction, the man who helped him organize and implement the plan to save his family, is slowly succumbing to old age, his health failing. His mother has more or less stopped speaking to him. Awkward when you live a hundred yards away. The nearby town that was his boyhood stomping ground is struggling to get back on her feet with the farm's assistance, but the town also has elements that have a strong dislike for Clay and don't mind making it known, even to the point of outright lies. It seems as if someone is always thinking they are somehow entitled to 'their fair share' of everything the Sanders have worked for over a half-dozen generations. No matter how much they help, it's never enough. Now there's a destructive survivalist group that has terrorized rural areas to the south and is now looking toward Clay's neighborhood as their next conquest. Their motto is simple; if they can take it, they deserve it. Yes sir, problems are one thing that Clayton Sanders never seems to run out of. Even at the end of the world as we know it. EXCERPT FROM HOSTILE FIRE PROLOGUE William Shirley watched as the people he had assembled for what others were calling a 'reconnaissance in force' gathered their equipment and shook down their ranks. He had combined three different 'squads' into a new platoon of thirty-one people, adding that force to an established platoon of thirty-five more. They would head north in a small string of vehicles that included a school bus to investigate the situation north of the Alabama-Tennessee state line. Shirley's group, the self-entitled 'North Alabama People's Militia' had lost a great deal of personnel and equipment in that area and he wanted to know why and to who. It was inevitable that the group would have to head north at some point in search of supplies. They had stripped their own area nearly bare over the last few months and moving too far south was out of the question. While he considered Decatur to be part of their 'territory', moving any further south than that risked a confrontation with the gangs of Birmingham, something his group lacked the strength for. There had already been a few skirmishes between the two groups and Shirley was determined to avoid any more clashes with such a large and vicious outfit. So north it was, into rural middle Tennessee. The area immediately north of the line should be safe enough and resource rich. That area was full of farms and livestock operations that should yield a good amount of food for his operation, and he meant to have it. If they waited too long then someone stronger, either from Nashville or perhaps Chattanooga might move into the area and declare it theirs. If the Militia wanted that territory and the goods it might provide, they had to act soon. And tomorrow should be soon enough. Sixty-six heavily armed 'troops' would move north and keep moving until they found opposition or else found something worth sending word for trucks to carry it back to the compound. If he was lucky, they would also find out who had killed his niece and his fellow board member's son. He looked forward to that. When he found whoever had killed his people he would show them what a mistake they had made.