Shadow Warriors

by Chris Bostic

  She followed my lead, and went feet first over the slope. I grabbed her as she landed. The force of the impact staggered me, and I swayed back toward the river. She reached out to steady me, and amazingly kept us both from falling into the frigid water.

  “That sucked,” I said as we followed the river’s edge downstream.

  “What if they find the buckets?” she asked.

  “Then the whole plan is screwed.” I’d tried not to think about that possibility. Having her mention it didn’t help whatsoever. I went with denial. “The lights probably come on all the time, you know, like when a deer or bear or whatever walks by. They probably don’t even look outside anymore.”

  “And if they do?”

  “Looking is fine. The bucket is kinda right around the corner from the door.” I tried to wink at her, but it morphed into more of a one-eyed squint. “They’d have to step outside to find it.”

  “Then let’s hope for the best.”

  “Yeah, and speed up in case they check.”

  We quieted our voices, but couldn’t quite do the same with our footsteps as we hurried along the river. We followed a big curve to the right. I assumed that would bring us up behind the second building, though I had been unable to see how close it was while creeping behind the first one.

  The river remained wide and empty of activity. We continued down a short straightaway, hoping to catch up to the others no later than the third and final building.

  When I wasn’t watching my footsteps or scanning the river ahead, I looked up the slope. I never spotted a structure. It made me feel somewhat safer, but equally as anxious. I knew it wasn’t really possible to get lost so long as we followed the river. At least I didn’t think so. But I would’ve much preferred knowing exactly where we were at.

  As the creek bent to the right, brush rustled off to the side. Carrying my rifle now that my hands were free, I wheeled on the noise. The sound grew as it approached the top of the bank, and I steadied in case a patrol appeared.

  Spotted Owl burst out of the vegetation a second later. “Don’t shoot.”

  I didn’t tell him that I probably wouldn’t have anyway.

  Katelyn asked, “How’d it go?”

  “No problem.”

  I decided not to tell him about the security light. Katelyn didn’t mention it either. We watched as Spotted Owl stalked the top of the bank for a few paces before picking out a spot to slide down. He gracefully glided, holding the bulk of his weight back with saplings, and landed on both feet right next to us.

  “I thought you’d be way ahead of me by now.”

  I mumbled an excuse that Spotted Owl thankfully ignored. He wasn’t talkative at all, and let a quick arm motion suffice as a command to keep us moving downstream. Once we were fully around the bend, I spotted three shadows walking the edge of the creek.

  I hadn’t realized that we would be so exposed down there, and it took me aback for a moment. However, I quickly cast the thought aside and started to hurry on ahead to meet up with my mother and her two detainees.

  “Hold up,” Spotted Owl softly called, making me pause. “No need to run.”

  “It’s too loud,” Katelyn agreed.

  My mom’s hearing was sharp, and she came to halt. She waved, but stayed quiet as we slowly approached her. She eagerly listened to our quick recaps, minus the incident with the motion-sensing light.

  “One more building,” Spotted Owl said. He took the buckets from James, and eyed the slope above him. “I’ll be right back.”

  “I can go with you,” I volunteered.

  “Nah, I got this. Just keep going, but not too fast.”

  I noticed the bank seemed flatter. I stepped backwards into the river until the water rose to around knee deep, and picked out the warm glow of lights from the final building.

  “It’s not real high up there,” I told the others. “We’re so close.”

  I instantly regretted sharing that in front of the other two guys, and once again wondered if we wouldn’t have been better off leaving the prisoners back at the horse camp. Noel was walking surprisingly well, which fed in to what was becoming a natural suspicion of him. But I’d been particularly concerned about James ever since he’d dunked his bucket and seemingly tried to drown Spotted Owl’s phone.

  I hurried back over by my mom, and took one of her buckets from her. She thanked me with a smile and a nod.

  That left James available to take the other bomb from her. I was naturally concerned about making him carry it given how he’d possibly tried to ruin one. But I didn’t want Katelyn or my mom to have to lug around a walking IED any longer. Nor did I want a second one, so I was glad when she ordered the kid to carry it.

  As soon as James took it, my mother kept a sharp eye, and a weapon, subtly pointed at him.

  “You holding up okay?” I asked her as I slung my rifle back over my shoulder so it would be easier to switch hands with the load I’d just acquired.

  “I’m great. Ready to get this done, and get outta here.”

  “And then what?” I asked before I could stop myself.

  “Then I guess we go back. We’ll need to get a real war council convened after that.”

  “Bigger than just Spotty’s tribe?”

  She chuckled at the nickname. “Yeah, definitely. We need to make a real effort to bring all the, uhm, tribes together.” She smiled, seemingly at repeating my word choice for our band of bushwhackers. But her eyes quickly narrowed, and she quieted.

  “You can say what happens next,” I whispered. “I’m old enough to understand.”

  “You read me too well.” She swallowed, and paused again as if choosing her words.

  I slipped my hand in Katelyn’s and pulled her alongside me. I gestured with my head toward my mother, essentially asking her to pay attention to my mother’s words.

  “I think one of two things happens here. Maybe the military gives up and leaves us alone. They’ll decide it’s not worth the trouble to try to take the park back. With any luck, there are fights like this breaking out all over the country.”

  “Or?” I clutched Katelyn’s hand tighter. She squeezed back.

  “They’ll redouble their efforts to try to drive us out. Probably try to bomb us into submission.”

  “Or just flatten the park,” I said.

  “That’s entirely possible.”

  I sucked in a breath and held it. Of course, I’d always known that a full out air assault was a possibility. In previous wars, the government had always favored air strikes over boots on the ground. It stood to reason that they needn’t waste precious lives on needless territory. Especially if the newly recruited soldiers proved as unreliable as the deserter, Noel—presuming that was actually the case with him. He was still very hard to read, and always in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  I made two assumptions at that moment. The first being that the highway was unnecessary, which I had doubted all along seeing how many resources the military had primed to throw into the fight. They seemed to want it reopened badly.

  Secondarily, I pondered about the state of the real world. The rebels needed intel we could trust. Noel had provided some information about the country, as had James. If the soldiers were deserting or less willing to fight, then things were moving in the right direction. But that presented the same big question. Could Noel and James be trusted?

  I skipped over that for the moment to focus back in on the government’s motivation in assaulting the park. I wondered if they would be able to spare the manpower much longer for a big mission, especially if we could really bloody their nose—and then throw in more help from the other rebels.

  On the other hand, if the Feds were willing to cede the highway to the rebels, what would prevent them from just blasting the road and the whole park to oblivion? My mother helped answer that one.

  “Remember how big this place is,” she said. “It’s like eight hundred square miles.”

  I remembered my dad’s description per
fectly. “Eight hundred sixteen,” I corrected. A huge size, which included one tiny little pile of rock that served as my father’s final resting place.

  “Right, and it would take how many planes and how many bombs to level this place? They’d be better off to leave us alone.”

  “True,” I said, though I wasn’t completely convinced. More importantly, I knew even greater missions were ahead of us. “And you’re gonna want to take the fight to the enemy.”

  “I’m ready now. Maybe I wasn’t earlier…not before your father was killed. Right then there was so much going on that I couldn’t process. Maybe it’s only been a day or two, but things are a lot clearer now. We have to fight back like he always wanted.” She stopped walking to look at me and Katelyn. “I was always more about trying to hide out and survive, but I realize now how deeply this has changed me. We have to carry on the legacy and fight.”

  I knew exactly where she was going with her speech. My heart raced, pumping a little more of the healthy kind of anxious energy and a little less of the crippling fear. I was ready for things to change. In some small way, I’d been that way since we’d left home. My mom’s impassioned words sealed it.

  “Your dad might’ve used words and articles to advocate for freedom, but we need to use the weapons that best fit our skills.” She looked at the bucket in my hand. “We need to fight a war like we know how to end it. Hard and fast. Aggressive as all hell.”

  “I like the sound of that,” Spotted Owl whispered as he emerged at the top of the bank. “But you might want to keep your voices down.” His eyes wild, he scrambled down the slope to rejoin the group. “I just missed getting nabbed by a patrol. They’re not totally oblivious to the danger all around them.”

  CHAPTER 33

  “Great,” my mom said sarcastically, and cast a quick glance to the woods above us. “Then let’s get moving.”

  Despite her words, she seemed to be growing in confidence. I was still squishy on the inside, but she’d rekindled the fire in me. It just needed a little more stoking to build into a raging inferno.

  We had a job to do, and I was going to do whatever it took to finish it—and bring everyone home safe. Everybody except for one.

  I wouldn’t go so far as to say I had failed at that critical moment in the shadowy hills, but I felt the burden of my father’s death all the same. No one could’ve stopped the helicopters. We’d all run like rats, but that fact didn’t make the loss any easier to take. But I could continue my dad’s legacy of fighting for freedom with actions as well as words. Mostly action, for it seemed no one could rival the written contributions he’d provided from the relative safety of our former home.

  If only we had more contacts with the outside, I thought yet again. I had a feeling his words had already made some impact. At the very least, they’d called attention to the crisis back before anyone was giving it any real consideration. So much that he’d lost his job. When I coupled his writing with my mom’s planning, both at home and on the prepper forums, I knew many self-reliant people had been able to put themselves in a situation where they could strike back when the time was right.

  I wasn’t positive that the right time had come. Perhaps we’d missed the opportunity to have made a bigger impact sooner, but our backs were against the wall. It was time to stop the soldiers; that much was clear.

  We continued down the river, curving this time slightly to the left. To my disappointment, the tree cover seemed sparser along the side of the river bordering the field. There was still plenty of forest, as well as those cursed vines along the top of the riverbank, but the cedars had thinned out. Taller, spindly trees swayed in a gentle breeze that carried the aroma of wood smoke to me.

  “You smell that?” I asked Katelyn. “It’s like a big campout. They’re roasting hot dogs and cooking s’mores up there.”

  “Really? I just smell smoke.”

  “Me, too,” I replied. “I might be exaggerating a little, but it pisses me off all the same.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll set ‘em a bonfire they won’t soon forget,” Spotted Owl interjected. “We oughta be meeting our scouts and the other guys any second.”

  “I haven’t seen ‘em.” My mom paused abruptly. “Check that. I’ve got movement up ahead.”

  Spotted Owl hurried on past Noel and James to hunker down next to her.

  I had been perpetually on edge. Every time there’d been movement, my heart rate went into overdrive. I had a feeling I’d run out of adrenaline long before the real fight started, if there would be one. I still held out hope that we could free the hostages without firing a shot.

  Shapes darted along the riverbank, definitely two. I had gotten so used to seeing Austin and Mouse running through the dark that I recognized the way they moved before I even thought to notice that one was much taller than the other.

  Spotted Owl edged out in the river a little farther to wave, and then ducked back up against the bank once again. The scouts came straight to us. Austin panted heavily from the run, but Mouse looked as calm, yet energetic, as ever.

  “They’re still in the house,” she proclaimed, but suddenly quieted to a whisper. “Them bad dudes are interrogating ‘em.”

  “It sounds rough, like worse than threats,” Austin said. “We’ve gotta hurry.”

  “For more reasons than one,” Spotted Owl said cryptically.

  As we pressed on down the river, I thought about what Spotted Owl meant. Obviously, he had to want to get there and save them from a beating or whatever was happening. I shook off images of intense torture like pulling off fingernails or breaking bones. Instead, I tried to think about what else Spotted Owl could mean.

  I decided that it must be secrets he was concerned about, such as one of the prisoners revealing the camp location. Spotty would hate to lose his hideout. It was in a seemingly well-concealed place, and fully stocked.

  But Spotted Owl could also have meant the attack. If the prisoners had suffered enough, the guys could be spilling their guts about how we were coming to attack.

  My eyes started seeing soldiers hiding behind every tree. Shadows swirled through the thin woods. I had to stop the wild imaginings, and pulled Katelyn ahead so she’d be with me while I talked to Austin.

  “Hey, bro. What did you hear?”

  Austin shook his head. “It’s bad. Like slaps and thumps and all kinds of yelling. The guys seemed quiet, but I don’t know if they’re gagged or just toughing it out.”

  “You didn’t see?”

  “I wanted to,” Mouse said. She still sounded amped up, if a little disappointed about not getting a good look. “He wouldn’t go.”

  “Oh hell no,” Austin replied, surprising me. I had been convinced Austin was much braver than me and had surely looked in a window, which I hadn’t dared to do when I was setting bombs behind the Visitor Center. “It was plenty loud enough to hear what was going on. They were firing questions at those guys about everything. Just yelling and beating and…” He exhaled loudly. “It sounded awful, but they kept beating them. And the guys didn’t say a word. They just moaned.”

  “But they couldn’t have answered if they were gagged.”

  “I reckon not. But maybe the thugs don’t want ‘em to scream when they get smacked or whatevs. It’s loud enough that any soldiers close enough outside could hear it.”

  “Louder than my pops when he’s really angry,” Mouse said. “Them soldiers had to hear it.”

  Austin looked over his shoulder at Noel and James. “They can’t all be bad guys, can they?”

  “Some are the lowest scum on earth…but not all.” I pointed a thumb at my chest to indicate the two prisoners behind me. “I’m not sold on these two, but I don’t see them as the type to torture or murder.”

  “Me, either,” Katelyn said softly. “I don’t know what to think about them, but they’ve not done anything crazy yet.”

  “Other than trip Spotty and try to soak the bombs,” I said. “Or always be around when we get attacked
.”

  Katelyn looked like she might object, but Austin beat her to it. He hadn’t been there when Spotted Owl had been tripped, so I had to talk him and Mouse through that episode. By the time I was finished, Spotted Owl was holding up a hand again.

  “We’re below the little village.” He looked to Mouse. “That open-sided barn should be right up here, so we need to set the last bomb there.”

  “What about the house?” Austin asked.

  “No bombs for it.”

  “Duh. I kinda figured that.”

  Spotted Owl shot him a look that said he best lose the attitude. “We surround it, and make our move when the bombs go off.”

  My mom stepped in to diffuse any tension. “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Now we just need to wait for John and the others,” Spotted Owl said. “I can go set the bomb by the barn if y’all want to keep walking downriver to find them.”

  “Yeah, I kinda thought they should’ve been here by now,” my mom said.

  I had been wondering the same thing for a while. I looked to Katelyn to gauge her reaction. She remained expressionless, though her normally vibrant eyes seemed a little dull. It easily could’ve been a severe lack of sleep and the never-ending hiking wearing on her, but I knew better.

  I squeezed her hand, and felt her weakly return the gesture. She continued looking downstream, so I slipped my hand from hers and wrapped it around her shoulder. She leaned into me.

  “They’ll be fine,” I whispered. “Spotty said they had a longer way to go.”

  “I know,” she said, though her reply sounded hollow.

  I watched as Spotted Owl hopped up the riverbank and disappeared into the trees. I hadn’t volunteered to accompany the older man that time. Katelyn seemed to need me more. As a group, we needed to get downstream.

  Turning to Austin and Mouse, I said, “You guys are quick. Why don’t you two run on ahead to find John’s group?”

  Austin looked to our mom.

  “Go on,” she answered. “It’s fine. We’re gonna follow right behind.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, yet lingered for a moment.