by Bobby Adair
“Hey,” said Dan.
“You go on back,” Tommy told, them without turning around, without breaking stride.
Summer was in front of him in a flash. “Tommy, stop.”
He didn’t.
She lunged and pushed him.
Or tried.
Tommy outweighed her by a good bit. He wasn't a bodybuilder by any means, yet he was hard from long hours spent in gyms in anonymous cities when he had little to do but sweat over dilapidated exercise machines, study project-related paperwork, or watch crappy movies on hotel cable. He'd hiked and biked up and down most of these mountains in every season of the year, so, when he decided to get moving, his momentum wasn't going to be halted by a blonde yoga girl.
Frustration welling up, Summer fell back. Tears brimmed in her eyes, she planted her feet, and threw her hands square into his chest. “You can’t.”
He stopped, and took a moment to decide what to say—whether to say anything. “I have to.” His voice threatened to crack. “For Emma.” He took his mind off the bodies in the stable, tried to stop guessing which one had been his daughter, and instead pictured the things he was going to do to the men who’d locked the doors and lit the flame. Two eyefuls of black hate brought along a big dose of Novocaine relief, and his voice shored up hard. "For Faith.”
The tears in Summer’s eyes now rolled down her cheeks. “Killing yourself won’t bring them back.”
“If I die—” Tommy let that thought fall into silence. “I’m not going down there to die. I’m going down there to murder.”
“So, you’re just going to walk up to the door,” she shouted, tears flowing freely, “and say, ‘Hi, I’m here to kill you?’”
Tommy didn’t answer her question, because he didn’t have a plan. He didn’t need one. He stepped around her.
Summer grabbed his arm and pulled him around to look at her.
Aaron was suddenly beside him. “Don’t do it, man. It’s stupid.”
Dan stood back, well away from the drama. “You won’t be a hero. You’ll just be dead.”
“None of you understand,” Tommy told them. “And I’m not asking you to.”
“Understand?” shouted Summer. “You think you’re the only one who’s lost somebody?”
“Stop it,” Tommy told her.
“My son is twenty-one,” she blurted. “Did you know that, Tommy?”
One more of a million details he didn’t know about her life. And would never learn. He wasn’t stepping off on a suicide mission, but he’d seen plenty of men and women with Battalion 704 patches on their arms. In Tommy’s mind, they shared equally in the blame for what he believed had been done to his family, and he was going to make them pay, every single one, until they were all dead, or until his luck ran out. Tommy looked past Summer to see down to the ranch house.
Summer pulled Tommy’s chin around to make him look at her. “My son is with his dad down in Denver. Do you know why?”
Of course, Tommy didn’t.
Summer wiped some of the tears off her face, and she stepped away. "You think I'm politically opinionated? Well, you should meet my ex. He and my son were cut from the same cloth. True believers.” Her face seemed torn between longing and disgust.
Looking at Summer, Aaron said, “I didn’t know you had a kid.”
“I only see him for a day or two around Christmas, or when he wants to drive up with his friends in the winter to ski. We never talk about anything of substance. Not anymore. He’s like his father, obsessive and so damn certain he’s right about everything. Politics and revolution are all that’s on his mind these days. I watch him on Facebook. That’s how I know. He and all his friends are the same. Extremists. They say things—” Summer looked around at them, “—things you wouldn’t believe. They don’t think people like us are human. They think we’re so brainwashed. They’re so full of hate for us, they don’t see how it’s twisted them. They believe extermination is the only answer.”
Dan shivered.
“Extermination!” Summer cried at the sky.
Aaron put a gentle hand on Summer’s shoulder. “I’m sure there’s still hope. Is he safe at least?”
Summer was trying to sniffle up her sobs. “He’s in a group down there. Not this 704 bunch, one with one of those hypocritical word-salad names they all have.”
“You think they’re in on this?” asked Aaron.
Summer looked down at the AR-15 in her hands, as if to ask, ‘Who isn't?' What she said was, "In a picture I saw from Denver last night, people in his group, mostly girls and boys, wearing their stupid blousy uniforms, were attacking the capitol building. I'm sure he was with them."
"He's on their side?" Dan eyed Summer suspiciously.
Summer looked shamed beneath her tears, and she turned away. "I don't know what he'd do to me if he found out what we did this morning."
"What would you do if you saw him?" asked Aaron, not realizing that was precisely the question Summer was too afraid to ask herself.
She sobbed as she stepped away from them, and her voice came out in a whisper. “Mothers don’t shoot their children.”
The forest around them lost its need for words. Only the birds up in the branches had noise to make. Only the chipmunks chattering through the rocks needed to make a racket.
When the tears dried up, and the sniffles finally stopped, when Dan was tired of shuffling uncomfortably, when Aaron had stared down through the trees for long enough, Tommy said, "All of you should go back to the Jeep. Thank Barry for the rifle for me. Tell him I'll put it to good use. That's a promise."
Summer turned around to face the rest of them. “I’ll go with you.”
“You don’t—”
Summer stepped up and put a finger on Tommy’s lips. “I’m not telling you what you have to do, Tommy, now please do me the courtesy of not mistaking yourself for my boss.”
“Don’t,” pleaded Aaron. “This isn’t worth your life.”
She turned on him. “Don’t forget what we came for.”
Hard eyes on Summer, Tommy told her, “You don’t understand what it is you’re asking.”
“Stop lying to yourself,” scoffed Aaron. “Everybody sees through your macho retardation.”
“I’ve fired my rifle in a fight, Tommy.” Summer was getting her back up. “What have you ever shot at—paper targets? I think I know better than you.”
“Suit yourself,” Tommy told her. “You keep one thing in mind, none of those people down there are walking away from this. I don’t care if they surrender at the first shot like that bunch did this morning. I’m going to kill every last one.”
Aaron snorted.
“What if Emma and Faith weren’t in the barn?” muttered Dan.
Tommy spun on him, eyes blazing. “What?”
***
“Dan,” Summer warned.
He turned to her, stumbling over his words, “You need to tell him.”
“Tell me what?” demanded Tommy.
“The truth,” answered Dan.
Tommy glared at Summer. “What are you hiding?”
“I’m not—” She turned away.
Tommy grabbed her arm and spun her around to face him.
“Hey, asshole!” shouted Aaron.
Tommy stopped him with a raised hand and a hard stare. “What are you people keeping from me?”
Aaron couldn’t hold Tommy’s gaze, and his eyes fell to his feet.
Dan looked at Summer.
Summer’s tears came again. “This… this isn’t what we expected to find.”
“Go on,” Tommy prodded.
“She lied to you about Faith and Emma being here,” spluttered Dan.
That knocked Tommy off-balance and he looked down at the barn, thinking of all those charred corpses, feeling ambiguous relief, an iceberg of cold anger stopping his heart. He fixed Summer in his stare. “You lied about that? Why?”
“It’s not what you think,” offered Aaron.
“What is it th
at I think?” demanded Tommy.
Aaron looked back at his shoes.
“It’s complicated,” added Dan.
“Somebody needs to explain,” Tommy commanded. “Now!”
“It was me,” whispered Summer. “It’s my fault. Barry didn’t want us to go out.”
“He told us to stay.” Dan raised his fingers to form air quotes. “Ordered.”
“We didn’t think the three of us would be enough,” Aaron tried to explain. “So she got you to come along.”
“For what?” prompted Tommy.
“To kidnap Frank Lugenbuhl’s son,” admitted Summer.
Had Tommy been in a healthy state of mind he'd have laughed, it was so ridiculous. "Son? To what purpose?"
“Lugenbuhl is in charge of the 704s,” explained Summer. “He as an illegitimate son, eighteen months old. He was supposed to be in the horse barn under guard.”
“And you thought if you kidnapped his son,” guessed Tommy, “Frank would what, back off? Surrender Spring Creek? Go his merry way?”
"Don't be an asshole," snapped Aaron. "The baby would give us leverage over Lugenbuhl. It was a good plan."
“Yet here I am,” said Tommy, “surrounded by three liars, staring at a barn full of corpses, and no baby Frank to be seen. Yeah, great fuckin’ plan.”
“Not all intel turns out to be true,” Summer told him.
“But lies are just lies.” Tommy turned his back on them and started down the hill.
“Wait,” called Summer. “What are you doing?”
Tommy didn’t see any point in answering, until he felt Summer pulling on his arm. “What?”
“You’re going down there anyway?”
Tommy took a moment, deciding what to say, if anything. She’d lied to him about what was the most important thing in his life. And for what? A cockamamie kidnap scheme, while his wife and daughter were—
Tommy’s breath caught in his throat. No matter what Summer or Dan or Aaron thought, his wife and daughter might still be among the dead in the barn. “I’ve seen evil—”
“God,” moaned Aaron, “would you drop the cryptic macho movie shit?”
“—and there’s only one way to deal with it,” finished Tommy.
“There are like six cars at the house,” Dan pointed out. “Whatever you’re thinking—”
Tommy silenced him with his determination. “They have a list down there. That’s the way these guys do business. We all know it. Right now, I need to see if Faith’s or Emma’s names are on it.”
“I’ll go with you,” Summer told him again.
“What?” blurted Aaron. “That’s stupid.”
Summer fished her Jeep keys out and tossed them at Aaron. “Tell Barry or don’t. It doesn’t matter.”
“This is dangerous, nasty business,” warned Tommy.
“I’m not letting you go down there to die,” Aaron told Summer. He glanced at Tommy. “Let him do whatever he wants.”
“You two go back,” she instructed.
Aaron didn’t move. “You’re really going to go with him, aren’t you?”
“I am,” she answered.
“Why?” Aaron’s voice shot up by an octave. “Because of the kidnap thing? You don’t owe him anything because of that.”
“You don’t,” Tommy confirmed.
With eyes locked on Tommy's, she said, "I'm going."
“Suit yourself.” Tommy turned away and started down through the trees. Aaron and Dan were both protesting, trying to convince Summer not to go. They didn’t understand that the time for deciding was past. The time for doing had arrived.
Chapter 10
With the sun drifting toward the mountains in the west, Tommy’s long shadow played over the tall grass that bordered the dirt road he followed. Careful to avoid the wheel ruts, Tommy walked, not fast, and not slow. Not scared, and certainly not aggressive. He was headed for the ranch house up ahead, where someone was bound to see him coming, someone who needed to believe he was something he wasn’t.
On his back, he wore an old canvas duffle he'd found in the shed near the burned barn. It had held some rusty tools that Tommy dumped on the floor before stuffing a moth-eaten horse blanket inside to make the bag look full. On top of the blanket he dropped a heavy hammer to give the backpack some authentic weight. Just like a hiker's pack.
On his belt, Tommy wore a rust-dulled camp knife in a brittle leather sheath held together by corroding rivets. The rivets matched the blade, but just as they were still strong enough to do their job, so was the knife. On finding it on a shelf in the tool shed, Tommy dipped it into a can of oil and slid it in and out of the sheath a few times to ensure it would come out easily.
In the small of his back, tucked inside his belt, Tommy carried Summer’s pistol with no extra magazine. He had no place for pistol mags considering what he had in mind. He did have two full mags for his rifle tucked in the back of his pants and hidden by the droopy duffle. Over his shoulder, hanging on a strap with the butt facing skyward and the barrel pointing at the dirt, Tommy carried his AR-15. The magazine mounted in the receiver, though, was empty, as was the chamber.
That was a gamble, one Summer didn’t like, not at all. Aaron and Dan decided the empty mag was proof of Tommy’s suicidal intent.
“I’ll do what I need to do,” Tommy told them. “You do what you need to do.”
He did. And so did they.
Tommy was most of the way across the field when a few people stepped out from the front side of the house. The pair strode over to stand in the shade of a giant old spruce. One lit a cigarette. The other leaned on the tree trunk. Neither made a move toward Tommy. Neither raised a rifle to put a bead on him. Both, though, wore the now familiar baggy fatigue jackets Tommy knew would bear Battalion 704 patches on the arms.
When Tommy had halved the distance, the smoker—a woman—extinguished her cigarette, planted her feet, and readied her hands on her rifle. The leaning man stood and did the same. No words were shouted across the field, but the message was clear. Tommy would not pass without their permission.
Careful not to respond to the implied threat, Tommy kept his gait steady, just a hiker with a lot of miles behind him and a head full of hotel air conditioner fantasies, fluffy mattresses, and hot food.
When Tommy was within a hundred yards, he waved.
The woman of the pair pointed her rifle at him.
Raising his hands, Tommy called, “I don’t mean to trespass. I’m just trying to get to the road.”
“You keep your hands up.” The man had the voice of a gray-haired old bully, a guy who liked to stretch a wife-beater over his skinny shoulders and round gut. “Come on over here.”
“Honestly,” Tommy called as he closed the distance. “You don’t need to point that gun.”
“You’re armed,” hollered the man.
“I’ve been hiking,” Tommy called back. “You bet I’m armed.”
“Just as well, friend. You keep those hands up.”
Tommy felt the tension tweak higher with each step. The man and woman were suspicious. But of course they were, they’d been up to no good. They had guilty souls.
When he was close enough to talk in a normal tone of voice, Tommy repeated, “I’m just trying to get to the highway.”
The gruff man pointed to a spot on the ground just in front of him. That’s where he wanted Tommy to come and stand. “What happened to your face?”
Tommy glanced at the house, scanning for watchers. He gave the outbuildings a quick look. “I took a bad fall yesterday up above the tree line.”
“Where you from?” groused the man.
"I started out in Crested Butte. Been hiking the backcountry for a few weeks.” Tommy noticed the woman was older than he'd initially guessed. She had a mean, narrow face, carved with deep sun-wrinkles. "Back on Monday, I think it was, a bear raided my supplies. I've been living on nothing but water and air biscuits, if you know what I mean.” Tommy chuckled to make it sound friendly. "Lots
of bad luck this trip. I just want to hitch a ride into town and get something to eat before I head home."
“Where’s that?” asked the gruff man.
“Colorado Springs,” Tommy lied.
“You’re not a transient?” he asked. “Looking to steal something?”
Tommy shook his head. “Just getting away. You know, trying to find a place where I don’t have to see the news every time I turn around.”
“You don’t like the news?” asked the man.
"Tired of seeing Congress tear the country down.” Tommy knew what these two wanted to hear.
“How’s that?” the gruff guy persisted.
“Impeaching another President.” Tommy finished selling that lie with a sour look.
“You don’t have much of a beard for spending two weeks in the woods,” observed the woman.
Tommy brushed his cheek to feel the stubble. The woman tensed, and the man raised his weapon. “You folks are wound up.” Tommy slowly raised his hands high again. “With the heat like it’s been, I like to keep my whiskers shaved. The bear didn’t take my razor.”
“You a Hazelton man?” asked the gruff fellow.
Tommy shrugged. “He’s not Abe Lincoln, but I suppose I’ll vote for him next time around. Why’re we talking about politics?”
“You brought it up,” said the man. He pointed at Tommy’s AR-15. “I’ll have that rifle now.”
“What is this?” asked Tommy, keeping up the charade.
“What do you want it to be?” hissed the woman, with a little too much hostility in her voice.
“I apologized for the trespassing,” Tommy told her. “I didn’t see any signs. I didn’t see any fence. I haven’t stolen anything. Why don’t you call the sheriff and let him give me my warning and I’ll be on my way.”
“There’s been some trouble,” said the man. “We’re just looking out for our safety. You understand?”
"No," Tommy told them. "I don't.” He let that hang in the air for several tense moments, hoping it wouldn't end with him being shot. When it felt like things were coming to a head, he said, "I'll tell you what, this is your land. I'm in the wrong. I don't mean you any harm. I'll hand over my rifle. I'll tell the sheriff whatever he wants to know when he gets here. He can check my ID. See I am who I am, and we'll wrap this up. But I want my rifle back when this is done."
