“Amy, Amy. You are mine. I am yours. I want to hold you, and love you, and grow old with you. I don’t have the words, sweetheart, but maybe this will make my intentions more clear.”
Reaching deep into my front pocket, I withdrew a small bundle carefully wrapped in linen cloth. Unfastening the simple slipknot one handed, I presented the contents to Amy with a little flourish.
“Amy Landon, will you marry me?”
The engagement ring was small but tasteful, with a diamond solitaire slightly over one carat in a yellow gold setting. I didn’t know much about jewelry in general or diamond engagement rings in particular, but both Dad and Uncle Billy assured me this was a good one.
“Where? How? Really?” Amy was breathless as she stared at the ring, her eyes filling with tears once again. “I thought you were just humoring me, Luke. Like with those ID papers we got with our names on them.”
“And I’ll take that as a…maybe?” I asked, slightly crestfallen at her inability to respond in a definite manner.
“It’s a yes, yes, yes. Yes, I’ll marry you, Lucas Messner. If you will have me, then I say yes.”
The ring fit her finger perfectly. The kiss that followed nearly melted my brain as Amy molded her curvy shape into me. I held her close, and when she finally came up for air, I could see her bright blue eyes were shining and dancing. The dark truths she’d dredged up for her confession were now banished from her thoughts. Or at least pushed aside for the time being.
Amy sat in my lap and we kissed and clung to each other for an endless time, or until the threatening clouds overhead seemed intent on delivering the promised rain.
“So where did you get the ring?” Amy asked as we were folding up the big blanket. I’d already collapsed the pavilion and packed it away while Amy loaded up the picnic basket for a return trip to the house.
“It belonged to my grandmother, Alice O’Keefe Messner. Dad and Uncle Billy had it and suggested I give it to you.”
“Wow. And how did you know it would fit?”
“That would be Lori. She measured your finger one night when you were asleep,” I explained, and I saw the look of shock on Amy’s face.
“So they all knew? Not just that this was a surprise birthday party, but that you were really going to ask me to marry you?”
“Amy, I introduce you to people as my fiancé. Not my girlfriend. People know what we intend.”
“Yes, but that could be years down the road. And what if your mother says no?”
I shook my head. “That is not going to happen. We’ll wait a year, just like we talked about, but now that this is official, you can move into my room if you want. But no hanky panky,” I warned with mock stern voice.
In response, Amy stuck out her tongue at me.
“Real mature, Miss Landon,” I said, trying to keep the no nonsense tone in my voice and only partially succeeding.
Then she stuck her tongue in my ear and I yelped.
“Okay, some hanky, but no panky,” I declared, and Amy giggled.
“Yes, we have to be role models for the kids,” she proclaimed, and I had to laugh out loud. The rare feeling of contentment and joy made me feel a little giddy and I was determined to enjoy that high for as long as possible.
Our world might be an ugly and pain-filled test of endurance most days, but Amy and I seemed to have reached a point of mutual understanding. Savor the good times when you could, and be ready to face the uncertain future together.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
The next few days passed without too much drama in our little part of the world. Amy’s birthday party, the real one, came the next day and was a success, and the ice cream and cake for dessert made for a nice change of pace for the adults and children alike.
Where my parents at least drew the line between grownup and kid seemed to be at age fifteen since Amy was allowed to move into my room without any comment from Dad OR Mom. So Kevin and Rachel, along with the Elkins kids, were joined by Sierra, Paige, and Summer as still being treated as children, while the rest of us found ourselves being drawn into the guard rotation and the heavy labor still necessary on the ranch.
Alex, too, joined the ranks of the newly promoted young adults and joined with Mike, Dad, and the rest of us on renewed training for patrolling and small-unit tactics. Of the Mommas, only Miss Beth took a hand in this, and she was designated as our unit medic. By unspoken agreement, she would not be allowed to do any patrolling off the property. That wasn’t sexist; she was our only trained medical professional.
This type of training wasn’t exactly new to me, but the intensity level was higher than ever before. My father worked with us as much as possible when he wasn’t visiting with one of the neighbors or performing some agricultural chore in the fields. The corn was nearly ready to harvest, along with the small field of oats we routinely raised for horse and cattle feed supplement. This year, the oats would be strictly held for human consumption, though.
Amy fell in with the rest of us, learning new skills and finding out that there was more to soldiering than hitting your target. Three days of dawn-to-dusk work outside, followed by hours spent in the library reading what seemed like every manual ever produced by the United States Military meant we were exhausted nearly beyond endurance every night when our heads hit our pillows. No, no hanky panky was going on in my bedroom, at least. For Helena and Scott, who had also moved in together, I could not say.
At zero-dark thirty on the morning of the fourth day after the training cycle started, I awoke to Amy poking my shoulder in the dark.
“Luke, that box by the door is buzzing,” she announced. Shit, that was the intercom. Nobody should be calling unless there was a problem. And not the kind of problem that involved kids out cow tipping, either.
“Intercom,” I mumbled and pushed up out of the bed. Stumbling over, I hit the call button and said, “Go.”
“The alarms on the north side, back sector just went off,” Scott announced, his voice tight with tension. He was manning the security bunker up by the front gate and his report meant somebody, probably several somebodies, just breached the fence on the north side of the property. That was bad. We had no immediate neighbors on that side now that Gaddis had been gathered into our group. Plus, his property wasn’t that large, and most of the land on that side was old, second growth forest and a few hunting cabins back in the creek bottoms that ran all the way to the Hubbard property, nearly three miles further up the road.
“Anything on the video?”
The video system wasn’t anything fancy. Just some trail cameras Dad and Mike had installed after it became apparent the solar storm had passed. Before, Grandpa had actual surveillance cameras in place but the pulse burned out the whole system. In an ideal situation, the setup was designed to be grounded, but with no warning, the long run wires fried all the circuits.
“Got nothing but some shadows that passed close to the middle pickup. Too far to count but looks to be more than a few. Could be five or fifty.”
“Well, that’s great. Wouldn’t want to get out of bed for just a couple stragglers.”
“Uh, I called your dad first thing. He wants you up and geared out in five minutes. Meet him at the south side door. He said for you to bring your Trash Compactor and a heavy load out.”
“Five minutes, heavy load, south door, acknowledged,” I replied.
Dad had tried to teach us to use “Aye, Aye, sir” and “Yes, sir” when receiving orders. We still screwed that up, but the read back was always used.
Amy, privy to the entire conversation, wasn’t wasting any time. While Scott was giving me the lowdown, she was busy working by the light of my night-light to pull the proper load-bearing vest and related gear together for me. I grabbed the carrying case for my night vision kit and my body armor, and then snagged the sling for my CETME.
And yes, I have a night-light in my room. Deal with it. The tiny window in my room is shuttered with a steel cover, and the tiny red light giv
es us enough illumination to get around without ruining our night-adapted eyesight. I thought it was pretty smart, anyway.
“Please be careful,” Amy husked, emotion heavy in her voice, but in the low light, I couldn’t see her tears.
“Always,” I replied, trying to sound cheerful.
“Liar,” she said, and kissed me. Hard, and with a bruising intensity that I think surprised even her. This was a different kind of kiss than we normally exchanged. Not sweet and tender, but commanding and consuming.
“Well, hell,” I said when she finally backed away, her breathing sounding ragged and raw.
“I’m going to be right behind you,” she declared simply. “If this goes according to the drills, we will need a perimeter team, too.”
“I know,” I whispered, my dread almost a physical presence in the room with us. Since Amy was no longer suffering from the blurred vision and her headaches had faded, Beth reluctantly signed off on her fitness to resume normal activities. If anything about creeping around in the dark and shooting at raiders qualified as normal.
“Just keep your head down and listen to the orders, sweetheart. Maybe this is just another group of travelers.”
I had my hopes that this was the case. Several times since the lights went out, groups using the cover of darkness, had cut the fence and slipped across the property without approaching the homestead. This was a nuisance and made it necessary to round up all the stock every evening to pen them close to the house, but was not always the prelude to an attack. Except when it was. Then the travelers were redesignated as raiders, and the shooting started.
I tried to hold down my worry for Amy as I met up with my father and Alex in the mudroom on the south side of the house. We all carried long rifles, earbud comms, pistols, and body armor, though Alex had to make do with the “large” size that seemed to barely cover his torso. Oh, and lots of loaded magazines.
We slipped out into the dark and double-timed it over to the Big House, where Mike waited with another team of three. I recognized the shapes of Ike and Uncle Billy waiting with Mike, and all six of us moved out without exchanging a word.
As we left at a quick, low shuffle, I thought I could hear movement at the back door and imagined it was Beth coming out to gather up the next team. She would deploy the “all-girl squad,” as they called themselves, with Lori, Amy, Helena, and Connie. None of us manly men wanted to have anything to do with that nickname.
They would hold in fixed fighting positions, what in my childhood we called foxholes, and the ladies were all armed with almost all of our automatic rifles. Not exactly “spray and pray” but the idea was to offer overwhelming firepower to any attackers. They would all be using our M4s with suppressors, which in the dark might serve more to disorient the would-be raiders.
As to everybody else, Miss Angelina and Mom would be gathering all the children and noncombatants into their respective basement shelters to anxiously await the outcome.
We had no reserve force, unless you counted the ladies already deploying. We all hated the plan, but nobody had a better one. We simply needed more trainable bodies.
Because of the way the ladies were oriented, in an arc of fighting positions shooting west, Dad led us in a line running west, toward the back of the property and in the direction of the old Skillman place. When we were in position, our fire would be aimed north, and we would form the second leg of what a tactician would recognize as an L-shaped ambush. Dad was in constant contact with Beth as we scooted through the fields.
The cross fencing on the property, unlike the perimeter fencing, was standard three-strand barbed wire and we low-crawled under like this was an obstacle course. Which it was, for sure.
We made noise, of course, despite our best efforts, but six men on the move at these speeds couldn’t help but make the occasional grunt or slight scrunch of grass as we moved. I was keeping up despite my not quite healed wound, and I saw that only Uncle Billy seemed to be having any trouble maintaining the pace. He wasn’t out of shape by any stretch, but his bad wheels were slowing him down.
Alex, bless him, seemed incapable of taking a footstep without making some noise, but maybe that was just my senses becoming hyper-alert. Despite what Scott might have said as a joke or my mother might have feared, I wasn’t looking forward to a fight, but my body seemed to be readying itself with the inevitable adrenaline dump. In short, my nerves were singing and I could scent something in the air. Something that smelled like prey.
When my father finally held up a fist, we threw ourselves at the ground. Alex and I were first to hit, and I was reminded of that drill in football where the coach would point the ball at the ground and we would hit the dirt, then spring up, ready to do it again. What used to seem dumb finally had a real-world application.
Carefully, we crawled forward, assuming a rough firing line. I couldn’t see what prompted the halt at first, but then my night vision picked up movement and my brain began assembling the scene into a recognizable pattern. Everything was shaded in green, but I could finally make out the group unknowingly advancing on our position.
I counted two scouts out in front, but still too close to the main body of travelers, which numbered roughly two dozen, maybe more. The back of the mass of bodies seemed to be a disorganized collection of people, making the chore of getting a proper count difficult.
The range was at the limits of my night vision, approximately six hundred yards, but as the cluster of travelers stumbled closer, I started making out details. In the green glow, I clocked six figures with long rifles, and several more with what looked like shotguns. They moved with a practiced ease, maybe not formally trained but showing plenty of practice. I figured the two scouts stuck so close due to the poor visibility under the crescent moon, but they clearly had not spotted us yet.
“They got prisoners,” Mike announced coldly, and I focused toward the back of the group and made out a pair of figures being led along the trail by nooses snugged tight around their necks. Well, hostages or cattle thieves they hadn’t had a chance to dispose of properly, yet.
“Beth,” my dad called, now ignoring his own radio protocols as we got closer to action time. “Can you direct your team’s fire away from the rear of the group?”
“Uh, I can try,” came Beth’s honest response. She was the only one of her team to be issued the night vision goggles. Not because they didn’t need them, but because we had so few to go around. We had four of the fourth-generation night vision goggles from the Homeland boys and Dad had two of the lower resolution second-generation monocles he’d purchased before the lights went out and stashed in a Faraday cage. Additionally, the Barrett had a night vision and infrared scope, but since it was so bulky to carry even without the attached rifle, Dad opted to leave it with the sniper rifle for now.
So when the shooting started, and I was convinced there was no way this situation would be resolved without shooting, only Beth would be able to sight in on her target with any degree of accuracy. That would have been okay, if not for the prisoners.
“Honey,” Mike chimed in, “just keep your head down and do the best you can. Make sure your team sticks to their firing lanes and we’ll be okay.”
Good advice. I didn’t relish the thought of killing innocent victims, but these intruders weren’t here to ask for a cup of sugar. They might still only have been planning to cut through our fields, but their path was leading them closer to the homes and that could not be tolerated. And really, if their scouts were any good, if they just wanted to pass unnoticed, they would have made a beeline for the acres of corn sitting in the middle of our property. Even unripened corn can be prepared in a way to fill your empty belly, or so I’ve been told, and the stalks would have better served them as concealment as they crossed through.
At four hundred yards, the group began to shake out a bit as their scouts began angling them toward one of the fence lines and headed in the general direction of the homes and our blocking force. The ladies might be forced to
fire blind, except for Beth, but I figured they would be able to lay down a withering opening volley. All we waited for was the signal from my father.
Those prisoners bothered me, and a few months ago, I might have tried to come up with a way to slip in and secure their release. Kill the escorts, cut their bonds, and then find a safe spot to hold when the shooting started. Hard to believe I was that dumb just such a short time ago. No, these prisoners would take their chances with a bullet, just like the rest of us. That wasn’t indifference, just simple common sense. Trying to pull off a rescue at this late stage, with the guards already on alert could only end in disaster. Thankfully, I was at least mature enough at this point to realize the truth.
At three hundred yards from our line and what I guessed was about an equal distance from the edge of our dug-in fighting positions, my father activate the microphone on his wireless loud speaker and addressed the approaching mob. By now, we knew the group numbered twenty-three, counting what appeared to be the two prisoners, and they appeared to be a hardened crew of survivors. The group contained a mixture of men and women but thankfully no small children. Teenagers, too, probably. Sorry, but in this new world if you were carrying a weapon into a fight, doing so made you a combatant.
“Stop where you are,” my father’s voice boomed, and the travelers dropped into defensive crouches or sprawled out prone on the grass. I hated to give any type of warning, but my father and the other oldsters felt it was necessary. These still might really be simple refugees, taking advantage of the dark of the moon to travel unmolested. Despite the previous attacks on the ranch, none of the older residents wanted to start shooting trespassers indiscriminately. Not yet, anyway.
“We have you outnumbered and in our sights. Sling your weapons and stand down. You will not be fired upon if you comply.” Dad continued his spiel but I could already tell they weren’t buying what he was selling. Rifles were being set to shoulders and tracking the source of the voice.
Walking in the Rain (Book 4): Dark Sky Thunder Page 12
