It almost didn't seem real that after all the days of anticipation and stress they found themselves dumped here as if by magic. Robert and Sonyea’s loved ones were within walking distance. Within reach. The long anticipated reunion could happen on that very day.
"I think I need some better cover before you guys boogie," Brandon said. “I feel a little exposed here in the open field.”
"Agreed," Robert said. “We’ll descend to the tree line at the northeast. That's close to the road where we’ll return with a vehicle to pick up the gear. If you lay low in those trees you should be fine until we get back. There’s cover if you need it. I don't know what we’ll find when we get home. It may take us a little while but we’ll get back here as fast as we can. I promise."
"I'll be fine," Brandon said. "Just help me shuttle this gear down there and I’ll be good. Take your time getting back. It takes as long as it takes. I’ve spent years in the Army so waiting around is nothing new to me. The Army practically elevates it to an art form.”
It took about ten minutes for the three of them to shuttle their gear to the new location in the woods near the road. When they located a decent spot for Brandon to hide out, he immediately pulled out a knife and began cutting branches, arranging them into a crude sniper’s hide.
"You need us to help with that?" Sonyea asked.
"Negative. I got it. You guys boogie. I'll be here when you get back. Be careful and enjoy your reunion. Don’t get distracted because you’re close to home. Don’t get careless. Heads on a swivel at all times."
“Roger that,” Robert replied.
His battered Go Bag was stained with blood—both his own and that of others—made it hard to forget the state of things. His plate carrier was stained with sweat and frayed from the abuse it had undergone since leaving this community a few short weeks ago. The entire experience had been a test of man and gear. He was pleased that his gear had all performed as expected. He was less pleased with his own performance.
It was hard to forget the way he’d embarrassed himself at Arthur’s compound. Robert went in with a plan and the bull-headed determination to carry it out. The problem with that was that when the situation changed, when the congressman showed up, Robert found himself unable to adapt. While he’d managed to salvage his relationship with the compound folks by finally getting his head out of his ass, it had been a learning experience for him that he wouldn’t soon forget.
Sonyea pulled on her own battered gear and joined Robert. They gave their weapons a quick double-check, threw Brandon a wave, and set off toward the road.
"I think we’ll just stick to the road. The odds of running into anyone here are pretty slim. There aren’t a lot of people living along it. We’ll make better time with a smooth surface under us.”
"I'm fine with that," Sonyea replied. "I feel pretty beat up right now. Everything hurts. Easy walking is appreciated.”
"Well, there are no guarantees anything will be easy anymore so don’t hold me to it."
"Yeah, you do kind of have a reputation for making things sound easy just before they turn into a real poop pizza."
Robert chuckled at that.
"Glad you think it's funny," Sonyea said. "I’d like to point out it’s not exactly the best quality to have in a friend."
"You think I do it on purpose?" Robert wasn’t offended but he was curious.
Sonyea hesitated, considering. "Maybe you don't do it entirely on purpose but I think it’s a combination of things, all of which are your fault. You are overly optimistic, you oversimplify things, and you understate risk. You also think your concerns should be everyone’s concerns."
"You put it like that and it does kind of sound like my fault. It also makes me sound like a jerk."
Sonyea held up a hand. "You said it, not me."
Walking up the remote gravel road, their footsteps sounded incredibly loud. Robert also decided that the pace was incredibly slow, likely the result of having been skimming over the treetops in a chopper only thirty minutes ago. He began walking a little faster, practically having to restrain himself from breaking into a jog. Unfortunately, his body felt so banged up from his previous adventure pursuing Sonyea and Jeff back to Arthur’s compound that he couldn’t stand the idea of jarring his spine. It was the battle between anticipation and caution. Caution had to win this time.
Sonyea chuckled, sensing his struggle. “It’s like we’re being tugged along. Like we’re being reeled in."
"You noticed that too, huh?"
"Oh yeah. So how far are we from your house?"
"Not even a half-mile. Despite my back pain, I’d probably be running if I wasn’t afraid of charging into an ambush or someone’s line of fire. It would be just my luck to get this close to home and get shot.”
Robert tried to imagine what he was going to say when he saw his family. The scenario of seeing them again played out in his head a million different ways. It hadn’t been that long since he’d left to go find Grace on the road. In fact, there had been multiple occasions where he’d been away on business trips that were longer. Never, though, had he felt so far away. Never had the distance felt nearly insurmountable. Never had he wondered if he would ever see them again.
Robert assumed Sonyea must be thinking the same things. He cut a quick glance in her direction and she was staring at the ground as she walked. Seeing her losing focus, distracted just as he was, made him realize that he needed to be paying more attention to their surroundings. He needed to get his head out of his butt and get back into the situation, back into the now. Becoming complacent was a recipe for death.
"What’s the first thing you’re going to say to your son?" Robert asked.
Sonyea grunted in dismissal. "I doubt I'll be able to say anything. I’ll probably lose my shit and start bawling like a baby."
Robert shrugged. "Can’t guarantee I’ll fare any better considering the circumstances."
Soon they came to an intersection and Robert paused. A bullet-riddled car sat in the middle of the intersection. It gave them both a lot to think about but neither wanted to voice those concerns. They were too close now.
"This is the road I live on. We turn left here. The next turn we take will actually be my driveway. Can you believe that?"
They started to walk again but Robert heard the faint scuff of gravel in the distance. He shot an arm out to stop Sonyea. He needed her to stop moving, needed silence to determine where the sound was coming from. She heard it too and froze, weapon at the ready.
“I think it’s coming toward us,” Robert said. "Something is moving but I can’t tell what it is."
He raised a hand for Sonyea to keep her position, then shouldered his AR. He edged around the car, trying to gain a line of sight to whatever was moving toward them. He took careful steps, gaining inches at a time, his heart pounding with each second. When he cleared the vehicle he saw that it wasn't a bicycle coming toward them at all but a girl pushing a wheelchair and a man moving beside her in a tracked wheelchair. He lowered his weapon.
"Sonyea,” he croaked.
She looked at him in confusion, then eased toward him with her own weapon raised. He put an arm out before she reached him and directed her rifle barrel downward. That gesture caused her to look at him instead of down the road so he nodded in that direction. When she did, she saw what Robert had just seen.
True to her word she lost her shit. Her first sound was a choking gasp, then she croaked out her son’s name. "Tom!" She pushed by Robert to run down the road, dropping her rifle onto the hood of the damaged car as she passed by it.
Sonyea's movement and her cries startled the pair at first but Tom knew that voice. It triggered something inside him. That voice had anchored him when he had nothing else in the world. When his eyes locked onto his mother, he hit the joystick control and accelerated toward her at the maximum speed his track chair could travel.
Grace looked beyond the oncoming Sonyea and saw Robert frozen in his tracks beside the damaged car.
Their eyes connecting broke his paralysis. He calmly reached down, picked up Sonyea's weapon, and began walking toward his daughter. With each step his cool deteriorated. The serious man, responsible enough to pick up his friend’s weapon, departed him with each step and he was soon a blubbering, sobbing mess.
Grace fared no better. She abandoned the wheelchair she was pushing and ran toward her father. From the corner of his eye Robert saw Sonyea envelop her son, smothering him with a powerful hug. A second later Robert felt the impact of his daughter's body against his and his arms closed so tightly around her that he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to pry them loose.
He couldn’t remember the last time he'd felt this complete. Maybe it was when Grace was home for spring break and the entire family was together after several months of not seeing each other. Maybe it was when he found her safe at Arthur's compound after being worried about her stuck on the road alone. That time had been different because the entire family was not there together. This time was different as well. He was home now. She was home now. Soon the entire family would be in a room together and the world would be as it was supposed to be. The gift the world bestowed upon him would be restored.
"How?” Grace said.
"I tried to radio you to expect us but couldn’t reach anyone."
Grace gave him an apologetic look. “The boys messed with the dials on the radio. They punched a bunch of buttons and I couldn’t figure out how to get things back to where they were supposed to be. I’m sorry."
"It doesn't matter now," Robert said. "We choppered in the same as you guys did, with Chuck. He landed just up the road and we still have gear stashed there, along with a guy we brought along to help out."
"To help out with what?" Grace asked.
"That's a long story. For now, let's get to the house so I can say hi to your mother and Blake. Do you guys still have fuel and running vehicles?"
Grace nodded. “We haven’t been driving very much. Town isn’t safe so we mostly stayed around home. The vehicles still have what fuel was left in them whenever you last added some. We haven’t touched any of the stored fuel."
"That’s good. We'll need a truck to go pick up Brandon and our gear.”
Robert released his daughter and walked over to pat Tom on the shoulder. Sonyea hadn’t released him from her desperate embrace yet. The depth of their bond was apparent. Sonyea finally relinquished her grip on her son and pushed away, using both hands to sweep tears from her eyes. Robert smiled at them. No words were necessary. They all felt the same thing. Everyone understood this was a moment that no one had been promised. They had earned this despite the very real possibility that none of them would ever see each other again.
Robert took a step and expended brass rolled beneath his feet. Though he’d seen the bullet-riddled car, he was just now seeing many spent casings were scattered around. Clearly some battle had taken place. He bent down and picked up a casing. He read the head stamp then tossed it into the weeds.
"This is awful close to home,” he said, gesturing at the wreckage around him. “Was this you guys?"
Tom shot Grace a quick glance. That look did not escape Robert and Sonyea's attention, the conspiratorial exchange indicating a relationship of some sort had developed between those two. While neither could be sure of the nature of it, they were keeping secrets. Perhaps even willing to lie to protect each other if need be.
Grace sighed with the resolve of someone bracing themselves to deliver unwelcome news. It wasn’t that she’d done anything bad but she knew her dad would be scared for her, knowing she’d been involved in something this intense. He’d probably feel guilt for not being there.
"It was us. There were some crazy moments around here and this was only one of them. We came out on top, though. That’s what matters. Everyone is safe and we still have our home."
"Did you know them?" Robert asked. “Or was this a random attack?”
Grace eyes animated. "Oh yeah, we knew them. At least we knew the ringleaders. I’m not one hundred percent sure how all the pieces fit together but this was directly related to Leslie's daughter Debbie and her boyfriend Paul. They tried to take the house and almost did. They also beat Leslie nearly to death. I’ve never seen anyone beaten so badly in my life."
Robert cringed at that revelation, experiencing a pang of guilt that he may have brought this on his family by asking Leslie to come stay with his wife while he went after Grace. By involving Leslie, he may have been responsible for the beating she took. He knew he couldn’t accept full responsibility for this; there had been no way to predict this outcome. It happened because of the kind of people Debbie and Paul were.
“Debbie beat her own mother?” he asked.
“No, but she made no effort to stop it,” Grace said. “She stood there and watched the whole thing. That’s what Mrs. Brown told me.”
Robert shook his head in disgust. “Can I assume those two are no longer with us?"
"Paul is dead for certain,” Grace said. “In fact, I’m pretty sure we might even be smelling his rotting carcass right now. We didn’t think he was worth the effort of digging a hole for.”
Robert was taken aback at the comment for a moment. It sounded harsh from the mouth of his sweet little girl, but then Grace was his daughter. He’d raised her. He'd made her like him in many ways. "And Debbie?"
Grace shook her head. "It’s complicated but she's still out there."
"What?"
Grace nodded. "I was ready to kill her in front of Mrs. Brown but I couldn't do it. I mean, kill her in front of her own mother like that? I struggled with it so I left it up to Leslie. It was her call and I thought she was going to do it herself. She had the gun in her hand but, in the end, she decided to let Debbie walk away. She told her she didn’t want to ever see her again. She was going to tell Dylan that his mother had been killed so he wouldn’t ask about her."
"The problem with letting a bad guy walk away is you never know when they’re going to turn around and walk back," Sonyea commented. “But I understand. Killing someone in the heat of battle is one thing. Executing them, particularly in front of a parent, is another.”
Robert nodded in agreement but concern still darkened his face. "Does Debbie know anything about how our place is outfitted?"
"Some," Grace said. "Leslie tried to lure Debbie into coming and staying with us. She didn’t ask permission. She just did it. Then Debbie told Paul and the two of them tried to take the place for themselves. You’ll have to ask Mom the details but at one point they even took over the house.”
“What?”
“She and Paul took the house. Leslie was beat up and thrown out, Mom was locked in her bedroom. Mom got out, though, and took things back.”
Robert was aghast. He couldn’t believe the level of violence and risk his family had been exposed to. "She'll definitely be back. Either with reinforcements or by herself, trying to appeal to our sympathy. Unfortunately, that's probably the least of our problems now."
"You’re making me a little nervous with that kind of talk,” Tom said. “You going to spill the beans or keep us in suspense?”
"We’ll get to it,” Robert said. “Let’s start walking. I want to hear what you guys have been up to.”
Grace gave the Reader's Digest version of what happened to them from the moment Chuck dropped them off at the high school football field until that morning when they went to find a wheelchair for Tom. Even giving the barebones version, it was a quite a story. Grace hadn’t processed how much they’d been through until she strung it all together into a single narrative. The more she talked, the more surprised she was that she and Tom were still alive.
When they reached the entrance to his driveway, Robert stopped in his tracks, bringing the rest of the party to a stop also. For him, this was an important moment in a day of big moments. Getting a chopper ride home was great, spotting his town from the air was great, and landing on familiar soil was great. Seeing his daughter was beyond great, but stepp
ing onto his own property was something special too. It was a moment he was afraid might never happen again and he relished it.
When he continued to stand there saying nothing, lost in the world of his own thoughts, Tom rolled up beside him.
"Just this morning, Grace and I we were talking about dropping some trees across this entrance. She said we’d still have the ability to come and go out the back of the property. This entrance off the main road is a liability. The group that attacked us drove right up the driveway toward the house. We didn’t have anything in place to stop or even slow them.”
That revelation pulled Robert from his thoughts. "The people we suspect are headed here now might not be slowed by a tree. We probably need to dig some trenches across the driveway or find some other way to make it totally impassable by vehicle."
"People headed here?" Grace asked.
Robert took a deep breath and pushed it out slowly. "There was a congressman who tried to take Arthur's compound but we eventually drove him away. It wasn’t easy. He was determined and had a small army with him. There's a strong possibility he might be headed this way.”
“Why?” Grace asked. “Why would he even consider coming here?”
“When Arthur’s compound proved to be too hard a target, he had to back up and develop another plan. Somehow he found out about my books and did the math. He figured if I was a friend of Arthur’s and wrote survival books, then surely I was a survivalist too. I think that’s all he has but apparently it was enough. Kevin and Arthur felt strongly enough about it to send Brandon along with me."
"The congressman is coming here entirely on the hope you have a compound he can take?” Tom asked.
"I think so. He’s desperate. He has a large group and it looks like he made promises to them. We can’t let him get close. They’re dangerous because of their numbers. Arthur's compound had the numbers to take them on head-to-head. I’m not certain we do."
Blood Bought: Book Four in The Locker Nine Series Page 3
