by Hunt, Jack
“Where’s the third?” Tyler yelled scanning his field of vision.
Lou replied. “He bolted. Your guy?”
Tyler cast a glance back at the body. He hesitated before saying, “Dead.”
Over the course of the next ten minutes they hurled bodies into the back of Lou’s old military Jeep, then unloaded the corpses in a dumpster at the back of a Chinese restaurant. Even though Lou believed that the lights weren’t coming back on again, he didn’t want to have dead bodies outside his business. Tyler didn’t get into it with him. He was just glad to no longer see the guy he’d killed. As Lou closed the steel lid on the dumpster, he glanced at Tyler who was staring at his hands.
“You know, the first time I killed someone overseas I puked my guts up. It’s perfectly normal, Tyler.” He walked over and took a seat beside him on an overturned milk crate.
“Does it get any better?”
Lou snorted as he pulled out a cigarette and lit it. “If you’re the one still breathing. Yeah.” He then chuckled to himself. “No, look, in all seriousness. It was either him or you and that’s the way you have to look at it. But a word of advice. Don’t spend a long time mulling it over. It will only eat away at your soul. Those men had a choice to walk away. That’s why I didn’t kill them when I could have. You see, any fool can kill, Tyler. You just point the gun, and squeeze the trigger. But to stay alive you’ve got to know how to use this,” he said tapping his finger against Tyler’s head. Tyler nodded. “I know your father was hard on both of you and I know you might not see it but he loves you boys. What he taught you when you were young was to prepare you for this. You see, there is a lot of people out in the city that aren’t ready for this. Oh, their parents made sure to pay their way through college, buy them their first car, and maybe even pay off some of their debts, but what use is any of that if you can’t stay alive long enough to enjoy life? Your father taught you the most valuable lesson. How to survive.” Lou blew out some smoke. “You can’t put a value on that.”
After they made it back to the store, Barb warmed up what remained of their soup and they began to finish it off. Once they’d eaten, he returned to his room at the back of the store and settled in for the night. He sat there thinking about all that had played out over the course of the night and the man whose life he’d taken. The look in his eyes as he breathed his last.
Tyler had begun to nod off and drift into a state of sleep when Lou knocked on the frame of his door. “Tyler.”
He raised his head. “Yeah?”
“Come with me.”
He glanced at his watch. It was close to midnight. “What? Where are we going?”
Lou led him to the front of the store. As he came around a corner that led into the heart of where all the merchandise was stored, his eyes fell upon Erika and Bailey.
“Erika?”
She gave a warm smile and he was about to approach when Nate emerged from a bathroom off to the right. He was doing up his pants when Tyler saw him.
“What are you doing here?” Tyler asked.
“If it wasn’t for him, I probably wouldn’t have made it,” Erika said. “That goes for Bailey too.”
“Ah, I don’t know,” Nate said. “I think she would have something to say about that, wouldn’t you, girl?” he said crouching down and running his hands through her hair. That was a big change from the reaction he’d got out of the dog the first time they’d met.
Tyler frowned. “Does she know?” That was the first thing that came out of his mouth. He expected Erika to frown and looked at Nate perplexed but she didn’t.
“He’s already told me.”
Nate looked down at the ground.
“And you trust him?”
She took a second before she replied. “I owe him,” Erika said.
Tyler huffed. “Well I don’t. You can stay but he can’t.”
“Okay,” she said nodding and then turned to leave. “Let’s go, Nate.”
Tyler’s brow furrowed. “Erika! C’mon. I…”
She whipped around. “If I stay, so does he. That’s the deal.”
“Just like that?” She nodded. “You forgive him that easily but you couldn’t forgive me for a bad date?”
She offered back a deadpan expression then threw a hand up. “Look, forget it. I thought you could help but maybe I was wrong.”
“With what?”
Erika brought him up to speed on the phone call to her parents and what she had in mind. “I figured if you’re traveling that way it would be easier to go together.”
Lou was perched on some boxes with his arms crossed. He didn’t say anything but his eyes kept darting between them. “Yeah. Fine. If that’s okay with you,” he said making a gesture to Lou.
He shrugged. “We’ll put her in the spare room. Dickhead here can bed down with you. Grab yourself a sleeping bag,” Lou muttered motioning to a stack on a shelf. Nate grabbed one up and they followed him out back. Tyler glanced at Erika as Barb guided her to a separate room next door to his. He bid her goodnight before entering his room and watching Nate roll out a fresh sleeping bag on the floor beside his bed.
“Well isn’t this a turn of events,” Nate said with a grin on his face. Tyler cut him a glance before lying down for the night. He locked his fingers behind his head and stared up at the ceiling wondering what the next day would bring. As glad as he was to see Erika, his fears over what trouble the road ahead would present kept him awake long into the night.
17
Flames licked up into the night sky. Wood popped, and crackled. Charred pieces glowed in the darkness. The ranger cabin had been turned into an inferno. They had spotted it in the distance long before they arrived on site. Along the way, one of the officers had attempted to get the rangers on the radio but failure led them to think the worst. As soon as they arrived, the three officers from Flathead County Sheriff Department fanned out. Unfortunately, the heat was so intense they couldn’t get close enough to see if anyone was inside. Corey jogged down to the shoreline and looked out across the glistening lake. A full moon reflected on the calm surface. If a plane had gone down, it was now resting at the bottom. They had in the past been called out to situations that required donning scuba gear and searching, but that was only done in the day. Had any of the inmates survived? One glance at the burning log cabin answered that. The question was, where were they now?
“Anything?” he asked Officer Ferris, who had gone to a few of the log cabins down the road to check if anyone was there.
“Nothing. We’ll sweep the perimeter, go door to door and check that residents are okay but that’s all we can do. Three blockades have been set up, one in Glacier, the others were north of Apgar but there is a good chance if anyone has survived, they have pushed east towards St. Mary. Hopefully officers will stop them there but my guess is with all these cabins around, they’ve probably changed out of their prison garb. Finding them is going to be hard. If they’re on foot they’ll get around the blockades and blend in with the town folk,” Ferris said.
“You think that’s wise?” Corey asked.
“What?”
“Going door to door at this hour. These guys don’t have anything to lose and we don’t know how many were on that flight. No doubt by now they’re armed.”
“Not much choice. It’s our job.”
“Why not wait until morning? For backup.”
“We are backup,” Ferris said walking over to him and looking out across the lake. “Since the power has gone out, our landline has been off the hook with requests for assistance. Officers in every town are pulling double shifts and that’s just to provide protection to locals. Why do you think they agreed to let you come with us?” he asked, turning and walking back up the steep incline. Corey surveyed his surroundings. The thick woodland of Glacier National Park swallowed them and the surrounding cabins. The inmates could be anywhere. It would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.
“Hey, I’ve got something over here,” Noah h
ollered.
The group hurried back up to the main road and found him holding inmate clothing.
“I just found it out in the open, right over there.”
“Well I guess that answers if anyone made it,” Terry said, turning and eyeing the perimeter. The ever-present sense that they were being watched had all of their nerves on edge. With the fire burning brightly and illuminating the clearing, Corey’s mind went on high alert remembering his time in Fallujah, Iraq. He and his platoon had been sent in to clear the city of ISIS militants. He’d seen it all; car bomb attacks, women and kids with bombs under their clothing, and large caches of weapons stored in homes beneath flooring. He remembered them getting a lead on a cache and group that was supposed to be in a home on the west side. A Blackhawk had dropped them off in the dead of night inside the courtyard of walls. Dust whipped up in their faces as they entered the unknown, feeling exposed and vulnerable. Their team had navigated their way down squalid alleyways, past wrecks of old cars, slipping through half-completed houses and wading through garbage heaps to find the secret location because they couldn’t use a vehicle without being fired upon. They had been preparing their plan of attack for months, using another team who would perform a preliminary feint from the east to draw away a large number of jihadists while an armored brigade had formed a tight cordon around the city to prevent them getting reinforcements or additional supplies.
The thunderous and sustained bombardment of artillery from warplanes shook the eastern side, obliterating everything in its path while they made their way to the location.
They found the two-story concrete home and a cache of weapons, but what they weren’t aware of was it was a trap. Nothing more than a means to lure in a large group of Marines, get them out in the open and then surround them on all sides. Within seconds of emerging from the home carrying out weapons, the earsplitting din of simultaneous fire from weapons rained down on them. Corey had dropped a rifle and was picking it up when his buddy in front of him was killed. Had he not lost his grip on one of the weapons he was carrying out, he would have joined eight of the men who fell that night.
Instantly the rest of them were embroiled in brutal, close-in fighting through the labyrinth of a city as they tried to push back and escape the insurgents’ grasp. Another four died as they walked into ambush sites, some of which were booby trapped houses. He could still remember the smell of blood on his face as an IED planted in an alley blew apart his friend.
He learned a lot that night. The junk cars that littered the streets weren’t there by chance but had been created to block roads and funnel Marines down into kill zones.
“Move,” Corey said, beckoning the others away from the clearing.
“What?” Terry asked.
“Move, now.” He waved them towards the darkest areas of the forest, where none of the light from the cabin would reach them.
Swallowed by the darkness, Ferris frowned and squinted at him. “What the hell is the matter?”
Corey didn’t respond but was focused on the road, and kept scanning the tree line. “Where are you?” he said under his breath. Ferris overheard him and grabbed him by the arm. Their truck was still out there.
“You want to tell me what is going on?”
“It’s a trap. I think.”
“You think?”
“No one just leaves their clothes out in the open. They could have tossed them in the fire, thrown them in the bush.”
“Maybe they didn’t have time,” he said, not seeing the obvious. How could he, none of them had served in the military or done any time overseas. The training they got in the academy, though good, didn’t account for underhanded tactics used by insurgents. It had cost many a Marine’s life to learn what not to do. And in his mind, this was no different. The odds were stacked against them and until he knew how many they were up against they had to be overly careful.
They remained there for several minutes until Corey collected the vehicle and brought it over. They hopped in and drove off further down the road. Even as they drove away, he had a sense they were still under a watchful eye.
“I don’t get it. We had them right there. We should have killed them.”
Under the cover of darkness, Gabriel was swift to act. He shoved Torres back against a tree with a hand gripped around his throat, and pressed the barrel of his pistol against his temple. “You want to bring down the full arm of the law on us?”
“But why would you let them go?”
“Did you see what kind of weaponry they had? Have you seen what we’ve got? There might be more of us but believe me, you don’t go into a firefight with nothing more than a rifle, a handgun and a shotgun. Besides, now we know what we’re dealing with. Six people. We take them out on our terms.”
“So, you drew them out just to see how many there were?”
“No. Not just to see that.”
He cast a glance over his shoulder before releasing him. He didn’t bother to explain. A man like Torres wouldn’t understand or appreciate it. He was a gangbanger. An opportunist who was used to doing drive-bys and making bad choices. He didn’t see that this was a game, a chess match and whoever was in the position of power would win. A sudden or wrong move wouldn’t mean going back to the pen but it could end their lives. He wasn’t ready to kiss his freedom goodbye and he damn well wasn’t going to die out here. Gabriel just needed more time. Time to think and that meant keeping them all alive. They were no good to him dead. Besides, now he knew which way they were going, he could go in the opposite. It would buy them some time. He was exhausted and badly in need of sleep.
“Let’s go,” he said leading the way. If the others doubted him, none of them said anything. They trudged into the woodland, searching for the next cabin and the next unsuspecting homeowner.
Farther down the road they came across three more cabins. Ferris, determined to do his duty, wanted to stop and check in with the homeowners. That was when they found a cabin door ajar. At first, they didn’t enter but surrounded the cabin and observed it from a distance. Satisfied, Corey and Ferris moved in to try and see if they could hear anything. It was only when they got close did they hear a muffled cry. Having experience in clearing homes in Iraq, Corey was the first in the door. He moved with purpose, keeping his rifle out front of him as Ferris followed. In the living room they found an elderly couple. Corey squeezed the bridge of his nose as Ferris untied them.
Ferris crouched in front of the couple. “It’s okay. What’s your name?”
“Mitch Sampson,” the old-timer said.
“Who did this?”
“Inmates,” he replied, reaching over and consoling his wife who was now in tears.
“How many were there?” Corey asked.
“Um six, no, maybe ten?” the old man responded. “Not all of them came inside. So there could be more. I don’t know. They kept us here.”
“How long ago?”
He shook his head, a look of uncertainty spreading. That was when his wife spoke up. “Roughly thirty minutes ago.” She wiped blood from her lip and Corey went into the kitchen to find a cloth. Ferris continued to talk to him as he tried to wet the towel. The faucet spat. The pressure wasn’t very good but there was still some water coming through. That wouldn’t last. Eventually the backup systems would stop at the water plant and they would have to resort to getting water from streams, rivers and lakes, or collecting rainwater the way his father did in large barrels.
When Corey returned, he handed the lady the cloth and she used it on her husband’s head before tending to her lip. He had a nasty gash. It had swollen, and looked badly bruised under the light of their flashlights.
“Did they take anything?”
“Some clothes, food. They wanted the truck but it’s not working. Do you know what’s going on?” the man asked the officer.
“The power is out across the county, or at least in our neck of the woods. We’ll know more soon. You both live here permanently or are you from one of the tow
ns?”
“Whitefish.”
“Same,” Corey said.
“Yeah, I thought I recognized you. Your pap is Andy Ford, right?”
He nodded, waiting for a derogative term to follow. Not many people had good things to say about him. It wasn’t that he went out of his way to be nasty to anyone but his reputation of being outspoken had landed him in hot water within the community.
“He’s a good man,” Mitch said taking the cloth and wiping dried blood off the side of his face. The response caught Corey off guard. He was so used to seeing eye rolls, and people shaking their head when he told them where he worked, that hearing anything good was rare. “Yeah, many years ago he lent us his generator when ours broke down. We were waiting for a delivery on a new one but it was back when we had that cold weather.”
Corey nodded. “That’s right. I remember that. That was you?”
He smiled. “You were young back then.”
Corey was in his teens when Mitch had shown up at the door to speak with their father. He recalled his father telling them that they would be without heat for a while but that it was fine, a few extra layers on the bed, and an extra top would do the trick. He never explained why he’d given it, or how he knew Mitch but that time had stuck out in his mind, as it was freezing cold. He thought his father was being an ass, or that Mitch held lent him their generator and was wanting it back, but that wasn’t the case. How many other times had he helped others in the community?
Ferris tried to get Mitch back on track.
“Were they armed?”
“Two of them were. They also took my shotgun.”
“Did you see what direction they went?”
“I heard one of them talk about the ranger station.” Ferris glanced at Corey, a look of confirmation as to who was behind it. “But I don’t think that’s where they’re planning on staying. They took the keys to our house in Whitefish. My guess is they are heading that way.”
