Free A Private War by Donald R. Franck

Mayor.  Heavy tears ran down her face and deep sobs escaped from her lips.  Even after all the killing and murder that she had seen, the open look of starvation on those peoples faces had touched her very soul and she cried out in rage that anyone could do such a thing.  Stopping dead in her tracks Kate grabbed the HK hanging from her shoulder and walked back toward the butcher shop.  As she neared it she could hear the people begging for food and the voice of the guard as he ordered them way before he fired on them.  Kate pulled back the bolt on the HK MP5SK and popped off the safety as the guard turned toward the sound.
    "Drop the gun or I'll cut you in half, I mean it!" Kate shouted.
    "Lady, you can be shot for doing this, these people are from outside and the mayor has told them we can't afford to feed them.  They have to move on." The guard stated as he laid his gun on the sidewalk and stepped back from it.
    "Tell the butcher to cut enough for these people for three days or he's dead meat too."
    Turning to the leader of the group, she told them to take the meat and to leave town for Redway and that the people there would take care of them.  Watching the people run down the street after taking the food Kate turned back toward the guard and told him to go back inside the shop.  Then reaching down pulled the magazine out of the weapon and put it in her pocket and resting the gun on her hip, ejected the round in the chamber, then placed the gun carefully back on the sidewalk. The guard looked Kate in the eye and winked, then picked up his gun and walked back into the shop.  Kate carefully lowered the bolt on her HK MP5SK and put the safety back on, then with a little shake in her hip she walked back to the hotel with a smile on her lips. Gaylon sat in their hotel room, a soft drink in his hand, and talked to Peters about the war and what had been going on afterwards.  Peters’ story was like so many others that he had talked to, home on leave the night of the bombing he had helped his family survive through the fallout and the first attacks of the pirates. But, on one his trips into town to get supplies, the pirates had attacked his father's farm, and burned it to the ground.  Since that time Peters had made killing pirates his life work and he was very good at it.  Gaylon smiled at Kate as she walked in the door and offered her a drink.  Placing her guns in easy reach she took the drink and sat on the only spot left, Gaylon's lap.
    "I just love your town, the way they take care of the homeless, and starving," Kate told Peters, "why is that, why do these people have to starve when you have store rooms full of supplies like this!"
    "The Mayor has decided that there are too many people in the town, too many outsiders that had come in after the war. He decided that we can't afford to feed them all with winter just coming on." Peters answered.  "I think something could have been worked out but some of the big shots in town put pressure on him and that was that."
    "But how can they do that, those people are human beings, they are Americans!"
    "I never said it was right!"
    Gaylon just sat and listened to Kate and Peters fight it out.  Long ago he had decided that you can't save everyone, that they had to at least try to save themselves.  The free ride was over, there was no more welfare for people who didn't want to work, who had too many kids they could never support.  Now it was survival of the fittest. The time of the freeloader was over and Gaylon thought that when things were better that the people would be better for it.  That hard Justice would also prevail in the end as the murdering bands of pirates were destroyed by the power of what was right and good.  Things were very different now because now there would be no more soft hearted judges and courts to let the criminals free and the victims getting nothing.  Now justice was swift and sure and there were no layers on the battlefield.  Only the power