by Akart, Bobby
J.C. nodded and Ethan looked around. When he noticed that the two guards hadn’t returned, he assumed they were responding to the shooting by the river, so he shook it off. He turned his attention back to his own quadrant, although so far, he hadn’t seen any activity. All of the action was along the riverfront.
Until now.
“Huh?” he mumbled to himself. He swung his drone around and returned to the spot where he thought he saw a person running through the woods with a rifle in his hands. Ethan, who’d become well-versed in the drone’s maneuvering capabilities the day he left the Haven, swung the machine back toward the main house and looked for a clearing to spot the man running toward the house.
There! he shouted to himself. I see you again. That was when Ethan’s mouth fell open. It was Frankie.
He spun around, looking for the guards who’d wandered behind the barn. He didn’t have a radio and had to rely upon someone in Haven House to see Frankie’s approach.
He couldn’t trust that. His mom and dad were there.
“Hannah! I need your help.”
“What is it? Is your battery almost dead?”
Ethan glanced down at the controller, and he was on his last quarter of battery life. He didn’t want Frankie to get away, but he didn’t want the drone to die either. “Um, yeah. Hurry, get me another one. Run!”
Hannah bolted for the barn and Ethan continued to follow Frankie’s progress. He’d slowed down as he got closer to the house and then moved toward the backyard.
“Here you go,” said Hannah.
“Come here, Hannah. We need to keep this one up while I fly the other one down there too.”
“Both at once?” she asked. “They said to bring one—”
Ethan shoved the controller in her hand. “I know what they said, but this is different. Keep the drone focused on the backyard.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Ethan quickly powered up the controller of the fifth quadcopter, and within half a minute, it was screaming down the gravel road, covering the three-quarters of a mile to Haven House in very little time.
Once he had it positioned over the house with a good look at the backyard, he exchanged controllers with Hannah.
“Okay, same thing. Do not move from this position, understand? Somebody is going after them and I need to make sure they know.”
Ethan flew the other quadcopter back and hastily landed it near the entrance of the barn. Without another word, he dropped the controller and ran toward Haven House as fast as his sore ribs would allow.
Chapter Forty-Six
Haven House
The Haven
Frankie ran from tree to tree, trying to avoid being detected by Will, who was pacing back and forth through the backyard with his rifle swinging back and forth. Overhead, a pesky drone had tracked him part of the way but apparently lost him, because it had hovered for a while and then suddenly disappeared, only to be replaced by another one. Sporadic gunfire was taking place all around him, but he kept his eyes on the prize. First, he’d kill Will, and then he’d take back Karen. Or not, he said to himself with a devious grin on his face.
Frankie moved around a small storage shed and found a trail that circled toward the back of the house. It seemed to lead to a small garage, just large enough to park the Smarts’ two four-wheelers. Frankie eased into position and laid his eyes on Will, who was patrolling the back of the house.
Will glanced up at the drone. He’d become distracted by its presence. It didn’t dawn on him that the drone might have been tracking someone. That was fine by Frankie, who wanted this fight to be mano a mano, allowing him to give Will what he deserved.
The drone dropped lower in the sky until it was hovering just above the roofline. The loud buzzing sound was beginning to annoy Will, who kept turning his head to see what it was doing. Frankie saw his chance.
He abandoned the idea of catching Will off guard and slitting his throat with the hunting knife he’d chosen from Chepe’s weapons stash. At the end of the day, he thought, why not just kill the guy and get the heck out of dodge. A kill is a kill.
Frankie worked his way down the trail, keeping the trees between them, and focused on Will, who continued to glance upward. Finally, Frankie was in a position where he could crouch behind a couple of large landscape boulders and take a clean shot.
He steadied his weapon and was about to pull the trigger when he was knocked down from behind. The force of the blow tore his rifle from his grip, forcing it to the ground and sending him tumbling into the rock. The brutal contact with the rock caused the gash to be reopened on his forehead.
His vision was blurred from the blood that poured down his forehead. He reacted instinctively, swinging wildly at his assailant, who attempted to swing at his head.
Frankie couldn’t see, raising his level of fear and causing him to defend himself like a cornered animal. He just kept fighting back, pummeling his attacker with blow after blow until their body crashed against the same rocks and went limp.
Frankie tried to regain his footing and groped his paddle holster for his pistol, but it had fallen out in the fracas.
“Don’t move!” Will shouted at him. “Frankie? Dammit! What have you done?”
A blow to the temple courtesy of Will’s buttstock turned out Frankie’s lights.
Will threw his rifle aside and fell to his knees. He crawled over to Ethan’s lifeless body and gingerly lifted his son’s head off the ground. A huge gash in his skull bled uncontrollably. Brain matter was smeared on the rock where Ethan’s head had violently made contact.
Will began to sob uncontrollably. His hands were shaking so bad that he couldn’t trust whether he was feeling Ethan’s pulse or not.
“Ethan! Wake up, son. Please, God. Help him!”
Will hugged his child, begging for help, when Echo burst out of the back door of Haven House followed by Blair. They both arrived at the boulders together and found Will rocking his son’s body in his lap.
“Oh, Jesus,” groaned Echo as he slowly walked up and placed his hand on Will’s shoulder.
Blair held her rifle in one hand, pointed at Frankie’s torso, and felt his pulse with the other. “He’s still alive. I’m tired of fooling with this jackass!”
Blair shouldered her rifle and pulled out her handgun. She cocked the hammer on the more powerful .45-caliber weapon and was about to put a round in Frankie’s head when Karen came running out of the house screaming.
Blair turned to slow her progress. No mother should see her son like this, but it was too late. She fell to Will’s side and hugged her only son in a frenzied combination of sobbing and begging God to save Ethan.
Will tried to comfort her, but she pushed him away. He finally relented and sat to the side, allowing her to grieve with Ethan alone.
Blair stepped away from the family and turned to Echo. “I wanna kill this guy myself, but now’s not the time. We need to let these two mourn their son without another gunshot echoing through their minds.”
“I’ll cuff him and drag him around front. Should I have Tyler come tend to his wounds?”
“No! Are you kidding me? Find some salt to pour in them.”
“It’ll be my pleasure.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
The Armageddon Hospital
The Haven
“Okay, Tom. Not to be cliché, but you dodged a bullet, sort of,” said Angela with a slight laugh. She was trying to lighten the mood because Donna had been so distraught, she was unable to function, requiring Angela to frantically call for Meredith’s help as her stand-in trauma nurse.
“It hurts like hell,” he said. Then he added, “It’s a good hurt, though. You know, the kind you can only feel if you’re alive.”
“Well said, Commander,” said Angela. “You’re a pretty tough old bird. Your wing was clipped, but the good news is the bullet went through the exit wound cleanly. Meredith and I irrigated it extensively, and neither one of us could spot any indication that the bullet fr
agmented.”
Tom explained, “The shooter must’ve been a hunter because he used a heavy-grain bullet. It spun me around, yet it was a good clean shot. Nobody wants their deer meat full of lead fragments.”
Angela smiled and gently patted him on the chest. “Okay, Tom. You rest up and I’m sure Donna will come get us if your condition changes. I’ve got a couple more guys to attend to. Flesh wounds, mostly, nothing like the cannon that hit you.”
The sound of a four-wheeler approaching caught their attention, and Tyler, who’d had a busy day of his own, went onto the front porch to investigate. She noticed it was Blair with a body draped over the front of her four-wheeler. Angela’s curiosity caused her to join Tyler outside.
Blair roared toward the cabin and squeezed her brake levers on the handlebars, bringing the Prairie to an abrupt stop. Her forward momentum threw Frankie’s limp body onto the porch of the hospital.
“Who’s this?” asked Angela. “He’s not one of ours, is he?”
“Nope. His name is Frankie. He’s Will’s ex-wife’s ex-boyfriend.”
“Huh?” asked Tyler as he rolled Frankie over to take a look at his head, which was now bleeding more after being slammed against the porch.
Blair allowed the Prairie to idle. “It’s a long story. Listen, I don’t care if you keep him alive or not. Throw him in the river for all I care. I just wanted him off my front lawn.”
“Angela?” Meredith had suddenly appeared in the doorway and glanced down at Frankie, who was bleeding all over the deck. She waved the trauma doctor back in to look at one of the perimeter guards who’d received a blow to the back of the head. He was concussed but started to awaken.
The two applied some wet cloths to the man’s neck and forehead. Angela was going through her routine for patients with concussions when they heard screaming.
“Now what?” she asked, immediately stopping her examination before quickly moving to the front door. The high-pitched squeal sounded like children, and it was coming from the direction of the barn.
“Meredith, it’s the kids!”
Meredith pushed past Angela and ran into the front of the hospital. Tyler had already begun to run in the direction of the voices, and Blair hopped on her four-wheeler. She slung gravel all over Frankie as she chased after the concerned dad. She pulled her sidearm and held it as she drove. She and Tyler arrived at the screaming kids simultaneously.
J.C. was covered with blood.
Tyler fell to his knees and held his son with both hands. “Where are you bleeding from? What happened?”
“I’m fine, Dad. It’s not my blood.”
“It was from one of the guards,” said Skylar. “They went to check on a noise behind the barn and only one came back. His face was all bloody and the back of his head had a hole in it. He fell on top of J.C.”
“Then he started twitching on the ground,” added Kaycee. “It scared us, so we all started running away.”
Meredith arrived with Angela close behind. Angela hugged J.C. and frantically searched his body for a wound.
“I’m okay, Mom. It’s just, um, sticky.”
Meredith took a few steps toward the barn and then spun around.
“Where’s Hannah? Hannah!” She turned around again and looked at the three children. “Kids, where’s Hannah?”
“She got scared, too, and ran into the barn,” replied Kaycee.
Suddenly, the group was startled by the piercing sound of an air horn. They looked at one another, not sure what it meant.
Finally, Blair spoke up. “That’s not one of our procedures. Tyler, please raise Ryan on the radio. I’m taking Meredith to the barn to fetch Hannah. Hop on.”
Meredith ran around to the back and climbed onto the seat. Tyler called Ryan but didn’t immediately receive a response. As Blair took off for the barn, the Rankins hugged their children and comforted Skylar, who was completely unaware that her brother lay dead in the arms of her mother.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Haven Barn
The Haven
Blair stopped just short of the barn and pulled the Prairie into the woods. She patted Meredith’s leg and motioned for her to get off the back of the seat.
“Why are we stopping here?” asked Meredith as she swung her leg over the back.
Blair held her index finger to her lips. She whispered her response. “You see that guy’s face down in the gravel? He’s probably dead because his head’s been bashed in. I need to check things out until we get some backup.”
“I’ll back you up. Let’s go.” Meredith began to walk toward the barn; however, Blair grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back to the four-wheeler.
“There is no let’s, and lower your voice,” ordered Blair. “I’ll go in, but you have to wait here.”
“No way, Blair. My baby’s in there somewhere. Frightened, or maybe hurt.”
Blair sighed and ripped her sidearm out of its holster. She thrust it at Meredith, butt-end first. “Do you know how to use this?”
“Um, no. But I’m going with you.” Meredith pulled the gun out of Blair’s hands and began to walk toward the barn.
Blair shook her head and caught up with her. “Don’t shoot me.” Blair moved past and raised her rifle, crouching as she walked, swinging the barrel from side to side in search of a target.
They entered the barn together. Blair pointed Meredith to the right near the conference room and she took the left side, which was full of equipment and boxes. It was a likely hiding place for Hannah, or one of the intruders.
As Blair methodically conducted her sweep of the barn, she listened for the slightest sound. Heavy breathing. The shifting of feet. Even the quiet cries of a frightened child.
Nothing. After a few minutes, she and Meredith met toward the back of the barn where the quadcopters were parked.
“Stay out here and check the lockers,” Blair instructed. “They’re a little small for a man, but Hannah might be too frightened to come out. I’ll clear the conference room and then we’ll get help to search around the woods.”
“Okay.”
The women split up and Blair entered the conference room. She immediately dropped to a knee and pointed her rifle under the table in the center of the room. Then she cleared the corners. When she didn’t see anyone, she noticed the couch was slightly askew by the window overlooking the front of the barn. The blinds had been turned as if someone had been looking outside.
Blair kept her rifle trained on the sofa, prepared to shoot through the padded back in order to take down one of the attackers. She eased up to its side and then quickly stepped forward to get a clear look behind it.
Still nothing.
She peered through the blinds and saw Ryan’s Ranger streaking toward the barn. To her left, Alpha and Hayden emerged from the woods and were inspecting her Prairie with their weapons drawn.
“Did you find anything?” asked Meredith, startling Blair, who reactively swung around and pointed her gun at her.
After lowering her weapon, she replied, “No, not a trace. Ryan’s on his way. Let me have my gun back.”
Meredith began to tear up and her arm went limp. Blair approached her slowly and reached out to take the handgun, and she slid it back into its holster.
“Come on, Meredith. Hannah’s just scared and she probably went into the woods because—”
Ryan interrupted her. “Blair! Are you in here?”
“Yeah. Meredith, too.” The two women emerged from the conference room. They were greeted in the barn by Ryan, Alpha, and Hayden. Cort was running toward them from the gravel road. The group walked back into the midday sun to greet him.
“They said Hannah is missing?” asked Ryan.
“Yeah,” replied Blair, who lowered her weapon for the first time. Meredith began to cry in earnest as she ran toward Cort. Blair watched the couple crash into one another, allowing their emotions to pour out to one another. Blair turned her attention back to the guys. “Is the Haven secure?”
Cort shouted for Ryan. “We’ve got to find our daughter!”
Ryan broke away from Blair and approached the distraught couple. “We will. She can’t go far, Cort. She’s probably scared and hiding in the woods. We’ve got all of our people scouring the woods and underbrush to make sure all of the attackers are either gone or dead.”
“What about Hannah?” begged Meredith through her sobs.
“They’ll find her,” replied Ryan. “She’s probably frightened. She’s not sure who she can trust. I think what we need to do is split into groups and start working the area behind the barn.”
“Yeah,” interjected Alpha. “Foxy and I just came from the river’s edge. We would’ve seen her if she ran down toward the cabins.”
Blair walked away from the group and began to look around. Something was not quite right. Then she heard it. The buzzing sound of a drone coming toward them. The sound grew louder as it approached.
The others heard it too. They wandered around the gravel area in front of the barn, looking skyward in all directions for the drone. Both Hayden and Alpha fanned out, scanning the woods in search of any threats.
The high-pitched sound emanating from the four motors of the quadcopter grew even louder, until it suddenly sailed over the roof of the barn and down the gravel road toward Haven House. Then it suddenly stopped and swung back around.
Slowly now, the quadcopter returned to the barn. Moving painstakingly slow, it inched closer and lowered its altitude as if it were an airplane preparing for landing.
The group stared at the device. Some were confused; others pointed their weapon at it, anticipating that the machine might attack them in some way.
Cort hesitated, and then he began to walk toward the drone. Meredith quickly caught up to them until they stopped. The operator smoothly set the drone a few feet away from them and the motors suddenly shut off.
