Defilade

by Chris Lowry

  Annie nodded.

  “I don't judge,” she said. “I've watched friends die. And while I haven't directly killed anyone face-to-face, I have called the shot to kill hundreds. I did it to save lives, I thought at the time. After the fact, I just saved a couple of us trapped in the front of a ship. I try not to second-guess, because it would keep me up at night. If you can live with it, so can I.”

  “Do they give you nightmares Warbucks?”

  “Not so much Anymore. I've seen worse since.”

  LT and Annie sat on the steps of the porch and watched the small farming community work they are tiny fields.

  "You're going to do it," said Warbucks.

  "How can you tell?" Lt squinted at her.

  "It's just who you are."

  "Lady, you don't know me."

  "Sure I do," she grinned. "You kick a man's ass, you learn a lot about him. Outside of that tin can, you're the kind of guy who helps."

  He shook his head.

  "Only thing I'm helping is myself to a heaping helping of dead Lick."

  It was her turn to shake her head as they sat there.

  "I don't think so."

  "You don't?"

  "No," she said as her fingers tapped a beat against her leg. "I think you're going to tell that preacher in there that you will help, and I think I'm going to go with you to do it."

  "Now hold on," said Lt. "Who says you're coming with me?"

  "See," she smirked. "You decided before I even sat down beside you. Besides, you can't leave me here."

  "The Hell I can't."

  "Who is going to fly you back to my ship? Who is going to help you fight the last fight, the battle to stop the aliens now and forever?"

  "I ain't forgot," he glared at the ground. "It's not something easy to walk away from."

  He pointed at the metal building across from the steps where they set in the waning sunlight.

  "I grew up in a place like this."

  "A cult compound?"

  "Wasn't a cult," he said. "Alright, maybe it was. A branch of Baptists that preached hellfire and brimstone and preparing for a fight with the Devil's army."

  She snickered.

  "No, I'm serious," he chuckled. "They were convinced we needed to be ready to fight Satan's agents in whatever form they may be. Demons. UN soldiers. Muslims. Anyone basically who was trying to bring the Devil to power."

  "Anyone but you."

  "That's right. Anyone who didn't think like they did. Now don't get me wrong, I played soldier every weekend with the youth group. We were prepping for hell on earth before prepping got cool."

  "I guess it made you ready."

  "More than ready," Lt said. "But I meant for a kid like me, the Church was like family. The only stable thing I had growing up. Fucked up as it sounds, and crazy as it was, I've got a warm place in my heart for it."

  "You've got a heart?"

  "Small one. Makes the Grinch's look ginormous," Lt grinned. "But that building there and this one at our backs, we had that same set up."

  Annie nodded.

  "You had an oasis growing up," she said. "Now you want to protect this one."

  "You a fucking head shrinker up there in outer space too?"

  "Why? Is your head too big?"

  "My head is just fine, Warbucks. It's my ego that needs checking."

  He stared into her eyes, studying her reaction. She held his gaze, chin jutted up into the air.

  "We're going after him," she said, as if it was her decision to make.

  Lt nodded.

  "You're gonna have to stay behind me though. One of us ain't bulletproof."

  "I am when I drink," she said. "Ten foot tall too."

  "You got any whiskey?"

  She shook her head.

  "Then duck and cover your ass behind me if things go sideways."

  “So we kill this guy,” she said. “And then what? We just leave them here?”

  “That's one of those one step at a time decisions,” LT said. “First step is finding the piece of shit they want us to hunt for. And we got a clock running. Seems like it would be better to tell them we're going out, and then just keep moving. But I don't feel right doing that.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Brother James waited in front of the alter.

  His legs were folded underneath him, like a yogi meditating for enlightenment, and his hands were gripped tight and locked under his chin as if he were begging for something.

  Salvation or sanity, Lt wasn’t sure which.

  He hadn’t had much use for praying for a couple of years.

  Not since a three day vigil at his dying daughter’s bedside.

  He knew all about mysterious ways, and “man plans, God laughs” and a hundred other platitudes folks had about dying.

  He also knew that fortune favors the bold, and the Universe was a fickle creature when it came to protecting evolved sacks of meat from a floating rock in space.

  The armor helped. It was better than any prayer.

  And he never had a problem with being bold.

  “Hell, I’ve even been called a reckless son of bitch, every now and then,” he snorted under his breath.

  No one could hear him through the faceplate.

  Candles set on sconces in the wall, homemade wooden shelves nailed together from scrap lumber, and covered with wax made from animal fat flickered in the sanctuary.

  If it could be called that.

  Lt wondered.

  James lived here with six women, and he wondered if it was just his home or a worship center as well.

  No matter, he thought as he stopped in the middle of the floor a short distance from the praying man.

  Annie stopped a step behind him and off to one side, waiting. Watching.

  The man on the floor took a deep breath, held it and let it out.

  His eyelids fluttered open and took a moment to focus in the dim light of the room.

  When they did, a smile creased the thin cheeks and he reached up to brush a shock of hair back from his forehead.

  “I prayed you would do it,” he beamed.

  “Yeah, well, your prayers have come true, Reverend Jim.”

  The man folded himself off the floor and bounced across the short distance between them.

  “When will you go?” he gushed.

  Lt wasn’t sure if he could trust a man that gushed.

  Gushing was something reserved for meals like the one they served, or the number of heads collected after a battle with the Lick.

  Not for agreeing to help.

  Though, Lt considered. Maybe it had been awhile since anyone offered to help them.

  Maybe the excitement was for an act of kindness in this crazy world.

  “Soon as you point me in the right direction,” Lt said.

  Brother James knit his eyebrows in confusion.

  “We don’t know which direction,” he said.

  “You got to have a place for me to start looking.”

  “That’s what we need you for. Eli said you were good at finding things.”

  Lt nodded.

  “I see the confusion,” he said. “Ya’ll ain’t got a clue and need me to Sherlock this shit.”

  The eyebrows knit again.

  “Does that mean you’ll do some detecting work?”

  “I ain’t a cop. Never wanted to be,” said Lt as he turned to lead the man outside. “But I got me a few ideas on how we can check.”

  He stood on the steps outside of the church and surveyed the grounds.

  After a few moments, he pointed to the wiry haired girl he had seen in the woods.

  She was still in the company of her two companions, but at work on the end of a row of green bean plants, chattering and laughing as they pulled weeds.

  “Her,” said Lt.

  “What about her.”

  “Bring her over here.”

  Annie stood up from the step and joined them.

  “Why do you think she knows something?” Br
other James asked.

  “She found us in the woods?” Annie asked.

  “Yeah, she was spying on us in the woods.”

  Brother James put two fingers to his lips and blew a shrill sharp whistle that cut across the compound.

  It was loud enough to grab everyone’s attention and all of the people doing work stopped to stare at him.

  The men glanced around in alarm, hands drifting to the rifles they wore strapped to their backs even as they farmed, while others started moving toward the doors of the two buildings to seek safety.

  James waved his hands over his head, some pre-designated signal for an all clear and pointed to the wiry haired girl.

  “Myra,” he said to Lt and beckoned her with a finger.

  She stared at the ground as she shuffled to join them on the steps.

  “Brother James?”

  Lt thought she might curtsey, but she stood two steps below them, eyes studying patterns in the cracked concrete at her feet.

  “How did you find us in the woods?” Lt asked.

  She cleared her throat and shrugged.

  “You do that a lot? You see things?”

  She coughed and nodded, a slight movement of her head that was only perceptible by the motion it sent through her bushy mane of hair.

  “You spy this guy they want me to find?”

  Myra nodded.

  “Which way did he go?”

  One dirty finger on her left hand pointed in a western direction.

  “That’s it?” Annie asked. “You’re going to need more than just a direction, Lt.”

  “He’s going to leave tracks out there,” Lt explained. “We’ll find ‘em and hunt him down.”

  “I can show you,” Myra croaked in a whisper.

  “Show me what?” Lt stared at her.

  “Show you where he went.”

  Her eyes drifted up, locked on his and fell back to her feet again under his intense gaze.

  “You know where he is?” Brother James reached out and yanked her arm.

  “No,” she squealed. “We just know where he goes. We watched him.”

  Her eyes locked on Lt again, and drifted over to Annie.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Brother James asked.

  She bit her lip and held back tears.

  “You’re hurting me.”

  “He attacked us,” Brother James fumed. “And you knew where he was? We could have gone after him.”

  “I was scared,” she whimpered. “He’s not alone.”

  Brother James let go of her arm and turned to Lt.

  “We thought it was just the one,” he stammered. “I can send some of us with you. To help.”

  Lt shook his head.

  “Got all the help I need,” he said. “Come on.”

  He led Annie away from the Church and towards the woods where the girl had pointed.

  “You too,” he said to Myra.

  She scrambled off the steps and ran to join them. Her two friends drifted in their direction.

  “Just you,” said Lt.

  She shook her head and waved them back.

  “What the hell is going on?” Annie whispered out of the side of her mouth.

  “I don’t know,” Lt growled “But I aim to find out.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Son of a bitch,” Lt lifted his blaster and aimed toward the sky.

  “Don’t,” a voice called out to him from behind one of the trees.

  He could see other men now, moving like ghosts shifting out from behind trees to catch a peek of him before they ducked back into the safety of the thick boles.

  “You could say “get behind me,” Annie muttered. “But we’re surrounded.”

  Lt slowly shifted his head to look around the clearing where Myra had led them.

  It wasn’t much, as far as clearing went. A small hillock in the middle of the forest, surrounded by a thick mix of pine, oak and hickory trees.

  Scratchy, thin grass grew on the hillock, which afforded little view of the surroundings due to the trees.

  But it was well hidden, which Lt supposed was the point.

  “Lover’s lane,” he said as he lowered his blaster.

  Myra pushed around him and climbed the short path to the top of a hill.

  A man moved from behind a tree and walked to meet her. He kept his rifle aimed at Lt and Annie, but he needn’t have worried.

  There were at least a dozen other guns pointed at them that he could see.

  “We keep walking into these things,” Annie said. “Maybe you need to practice hunting or something.”

  “Yeah, hunting Lick’s I’m pretty damn good.”

  “Are you? I mean, I just saw the one time. And you have the Suit too.”

  He smirked under his face plate but kept his mouth shut.

  “Maybe you trust the wrong people.”

  She could see his helmet move as he nodded.

  One of the people he trusted to lead him toward the bad guy was at the top of the hill, warms wrapped around the waist of the man, her head buried in his chest in a hug.

  “I’d tell you to drop your weapons,” Lt called out. “But I’m gonna let you keep ‘em. Won’t do you a lot of good against me anyway, and I don’t want to send up smoke signals in a firefight to let the Lick know where we are.”

  The man detached from Myra and took two steps down the hillock toward Lt.

  “You backed the wrong horse,” he said.

  “You the one doing all the killing back at the church?”

  His finger tightened on the trigger guard.

  The man shook his head.

  “Kill? Who’s been killed?”

  He glanced at Myra sharply, and she answered him with a head shake.

  “No one’s been killed,” the man smirked. “Sounds like you fell for Brother Jim’s lies.”

  He reached up and grabbed Myra by the hand.

  “If you hold your fire, I’ll take you to the man you’re looking to find.”

  Lt turned his reflective faceplate toward Annie.

  “What are you looking at me for?” she said. “You got us out here. Let’s go find him.”

  They fell in step behind Myra as the rest of the men moved into a formation behind them, escorting them up a narrow game path on the other side of the clearing.

  “Don’t think I won’t forget you led us into an ambush,” Lt said to the girl.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  "Like wagons waiting on an attack," Lt said.

  The men led them into a shallow glade where two country roads intersected after a bridge.

  There were two paths along either side of the embankment leading to the creek bed under the concrete arch.

  Rocks dotted the downstream end of the creek, creating a shallow pool of flowing water that overtopped the small dam to continue meandering through the woods.

  The open space next to the water looked like a makeshift parking lot from before, the kind of place locals would pull into to cast a few lines to fish, or to spend hot summer days cooling off in the water.

  Now there were six RV's pulled in a tight circle, bumper to bumper with a tiny opening between two that allowed access to the interior.

  Lt guessed they had been there for some time.

  All of the RV's had flat tires, and the undercarriages were covered with boards, pieces of tin anddetritus scavenged as wind block.

  Myra went first through the narrow space, so tight she was forced to turn sideways to squeeze through.