by Eric Vall
The girls often said that we only killed bad guys, but Brody had proven himself to be a very bad guy, and it was his time.
He was perceptive, though, and I figured he might already know that we wanted him gone after this was all over. That was probably part of the reason he hadn’t told us about whatever was happening in New York in the first place. If we had all the information then we wouldn’t need him. Another reason he had insisted on coming to Lebanon and Burlington, probably.
Either way, we’d take someone prisoner today and figure out what in the hell his plan was. The tables were about to turn, and we’d have the upper hand.
The sun came up as we made it to the country club, and Brody and his team stood outside. Brody had a cigarette in his mouth, and he took a drag on it as we came up and blew it right in our direction.
“Well,” he said with a grin, “good morning. Ready to blow some shit up?”
“Yup,” Bailey said, and she flashed him a smile so sweet and salty at the same time that I had to stifle back a laugh.
“Right,” Brody said, and his smile became more forced. “Let’s get this shit done, then.”
“Let’s,” Anna said.
My girls had brought some attitude with them that morning, and I loved every second of it. Watching Brody’s misogynistic side twitch gave me far more joy than it had a right to. I knew he wanted to put the girls in their place, but he knew that he’d have to go through me to do it. And they knew it, too. None of them were scared of him, probably in part because they saw me kick his ass, but that just fed into their attitudes, and I took great pleasure in watching Brody squirm as he tried to keep his mouth shut.
I led everyone to the tree line where we had stayed the day before, and we waited for the patrols to leave for the day. Everyone inside was still twitchy, still smoking, and still eyeing each other with one finger on the trigger. Part of me thought that if we pulled off the explosion well enough then they might just start shooting each other, but of course I wouldn’t count on it.
Once again, it took these guys a while to get going in the morning, and it was about an hour before they started to get ready to leave. After the patrols were all gone for the day I gave the signal and everyone moved to their positions around the perimeter. I was close to the front gate with Tara on one side of me and Anna on the other. Brody was at the back of the campus, as far away from the English building as possible. I had put myself and my girls there for a reason. We’d make sure that no civilians came into harm during this. I had yet to actually see any women, but I did see several men come out of the English building the night before with pants half undone still, so I didn’t think Brody was lying. Besides, I doubted he cared. He knew that I’d put him far away from the English building, but that put him right by the gym where the arsenal was. It was a risk I’d have to take, and another reason why Bailey had eyes on everyone.
The sniper was posted on the roof of the building across the street from the college. She would have a view of the whole area, and the perfect angle to get a shot at the science building where the lab was.
Everyone had plenty of time to get into position, so now it was up to Bailey to do the kickoff. Once the lab went up everyone else came in.
I kept my breath even as I watched the men in the yard and the ones on patrol. They stood around and smoked and talked with each other, and I had to wonder who was in charge. Perhaps that’s who was in New York, because none of these men seemed to be any higher up than the next. They all slacked off and smoked and barely paid any attention to their surroundings.
I shook my head as I watched one guy take such a large hit off of his pipe that he started to cough heavily. These guys made it too easy.
Just then I thought I heard the sound of the grenade launcher, though it was incredibly faint, and a second later the first floor of the science building exploded.
The explosion shattered the windows, and the whole floor was on fire. I could hear men scream inside, and the men in the yard quickly ran toward the building.
“What the fuck happened!” one man yelled.
“How am I supposed to know?” another yelled back. “They must’ve done something wrong in there!”
“Put it out!” the first guy hollered, and I chuckled to myself. These guys weren’t prepared for shit.
All of the men in the yard started to gather around the building, and they tried to empty water bottles through the windows, or toss the bottles directly into the building in an attempt to stop the flames. The men who had gone into the barracks after their nighttime patrol came out to see what was going on, and soon everybody was gathered around the fire.
They ran around like chickens with their heads cut off, as the saying goes. None of them had any idea what to do, and a few of them had even gone so far as to drop their weapons and run inside to try and save their precious drugs.
I’d seen enough. I lifted my rifle and took aim at a guy who paced back and forth with his hands on his head. I let him take one step, then another, then bang.
My rifle went off with a loud crack, and just after it did everyone else’s guns fired as well.
The men were so conglomerated with no shelter around, that when they realized what was going on half of them were already down. Some of them tried to run off toward the other buildings, but they didn’t make it far before they were taken down.
Since our team was so spread out around the perimeter, we had eyes everywhere. A couple of the men started to try and shoot wildly into the trees around campus, but Bailey quickly took out anybody who raised a weapon while the rest of us handled the ones who tried to run and hide.
It didn’t take more than five minutes before the whole thing was over, and I was shocked that it had gone so well. These guys were tweakers, and they had made themselves easy targets as far as I was concerned. One fire, and they all went nuts to the point where they had no idea what was going on around them. I guess it didn’t matter how paranoid they were when their drugs were in danger.
Shit. Anna.
I quickly searched for the redhead, and she popped her head through the trees where she had hidden and shook her head at me.
Double shit. That meant that she hadn’t been able to secure a guy to interrogate.
We still had the patrols, though, so we had time to figure out how to adjust. But in the meantime, we needed to check on the women and clear out the arsenal in case that fire spread. The guys in the yard had done nothing to put it out, and I guess the amount of chemicals in there was fueling the flames because it was only getting bigger.
I quickly opened the gate and made my way to the English building. Anna, Paige, and Tara arrived a moment later, and I kicked the door in so we could clear the place.
Once we were inside, I heard crying and shushing coming from down the hallway. There was a large set of double doors that said they led to the conference room. I kept my pistol raised and slowly opened the door to reveal a group of women huddled together on the floor.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I said. “Is there anyone else in here with you?”
They didn’t say anything, but I saw their eyes dart to the right, so I quickly raised my pistol and jumped out so that I had eyes on that corner of the room.
There were two men in there, one of them even had his pants halfway down his thighs, and he held a woman in a headlock with a pistol to her temple.
The other had his M16 up, but he hadn’t been smart enough to take a human shield.
“Help me, please,” the woman sobbed.
“Shut the fuck up!” the tweaker yelled, and he pushed the gun harder into her temple which just made her cry harder.
“Put it down,” I said, my voice low and cold.
“Fuck you, man!” the other guy shouted, but Tara was suddenly right beside me, and she let off a round from her Ruger that went straight through his temple. The guy fell to the ground, and a couple of rounds fired up at the ceiling as he fell.
“What the fuck!” the man with the
human shield yelled.
“Unless you want to end up like your friend I’d suggest you put the fucking gun down,” I said, and my voice grew louder with each word.
I could see the fear in his eyes, they darted around quickly as he looked for a way out.
“Give her here,” Tara said, and she kept her Ruger raised with one hand, but she put out the other so the woman could grab it.
“You’ll fuckin’ kill me if I do!” he yelled over the sound of our ringing ears.
“We’ll kill you either way,” Tara told him.
“What the fuck!” he screeched. “Is that supposed to make me--”
His words were cut short as I took the headshot. He had been so distracted with his thoughts that he had taken his finger off the trigger, and while he talked, he raised the barrel of the gun so that it was above the woman’s head. That was my opportunity, and I took it.
“Oh, shit,” Tara said, “nice shot.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Come here,” Tara said as she pulled the woman away from the half naked man on the floor. The girl collapsed into Tara’s arms and sobbed hysterically.
“Okay,” Paige said, and she holstered her gun and walked over to the rest of the women. “We’re going to get you out of here.”
“I want to go home,” one woman sobbed as Paige helped her up.
“I know,” the brunette said, “it’s okay, we’re gonna take care of you.”
“Paige,” I said, “look them over, then we’ll meet you in the yard.”
“Right,” she said, then she turned to the women, “I’m a nurse. I’m just going to make sure nobody needs medical attention right away. Is that alright? Is anybody bleeding?”
I turned and headed back outside, and Anna was right behind me. As much as I wanted to stay and help with the women, there were other pressing matters to attend to.
“To the arsenal?” she asked.
“Yup,” I said, and I started to jog across the campus.
By the time we got there, Brody was already in the gym and going through the supplies.
“‘Bout time you showed up,” he said as we walked in. “I didn’t figure you’d leave all of this for me.”
“You’d be right about that,” I told him. “We need to get this stuff out of here. If that fire spreads then this place will go up like the fourth of July.”
“You’re right about that,” he agreed.
“There’s still three jeeps in the yard,” Anna said. “I’ll pull them around.”
“Let’s each grab one,” I said.
“Alright,” Brody said, and he gave me a narrow eyed smile.
We made our way over to the jeeps and found Brody’s guys staring at the fire.
“Don’t worry about it, boys,” I said as I hopped into one of the jeeps. “Go over to the gym, we could use the help.”
“Okay,” one of them called, and I took off toward the arsenal.
We worked quickly to load up the jeeps, and by the time we were done each of them was filled to the brim. We’d have to figure out how to sort through the stuff later, but for the moment we just needed to make sure that if the fire spread there was no chance of all this gunpowder going up. That would only make matters worse.
Once the jeeps were packed, I told Brody and his team to get some water, then Anna and I went back to the English building.
Paige, Tara, and Bailey stood outside with five women who sat on the steps of the building with water bottles in hand as they cried on one another.
“Hey,” I said as I approached the girls. “How do they look?”
“They’re alright,” Paige said. “They want to leave, but they’re still pretty hysterical from what just happened. I don’t think we should let them drive yet.”
“No,” I agreed. “Probably not. I’ll talk to them.”
“We can take them to our campsite for now,” Bailey suggested.
“Good idea,” I told her and I headed over to the women and dropped down to one knee in front of them. I spoke with the softest voice I could manage, but they still looked terrified of me. “My friend says that you want to leave. We’ll let you go wherever you want, but right now there are still men who need to be taken care of and we need to make sure you’re safe. We’ll give you some supplies before you leave too, but for now, do you think you can stay at our campsite until we get rid of all the men who hurt you?”
The women looked at each other, and a dirty blonde girl with large green eyes spoke up.
“You promise you’ll let us go?” she asked, and she looked from me to Paige.
“We have no reason to keep you,” Paige said as she rushed to my side. “We just want to make sure you’re stable enough to drive.”
“We’ll give you some food and weapons, too,” Bailey said. “We just rescued some women from the outpost in Lebanon and they headed south with some jeeps and supplies.”
“Was there a woman there named Mary?” a small voice asked, and I turned to see a young girl with strawberry blonde hair staring at me hopefully.
“Yes,” I said. “There was.”
The woman immediately burst into tears, and the one with dirty blonde hair put her hand on her shoulder before she turned back to me.
“That’s her sister,” she said. “You’re sure her name was Mary?”
“I’m sure,” I said.
“They took her from here a few months ago,” the strawberry blonde breathed, and she wiped away her tears. “Some dude doing a drop had asked to have her. The guy on guard duty made him give him all of his drugs for the week.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But we’ll get you all going as soon as possible. I’m sure you can find them.”
“Thank you,” she said, and she looked down at the ground.
I walked back over the girls and shook my head as I took a shaky breath.
“That must be why Mary said it wasn’t safe up north,” Anna whispered. “She knew about the Burlington outpost because she came from here.”
“We need to get them over to our campsite,” I said. “We still have the patrols to worry about today.”
“Right,” Anna said.
“I tried to wound someone,” Bailey told us, “but Brody took him out with a headshot. I think he thought that I just missed or something.”
“I’m sure that’s what his ego told him,” I sneered, then I thought for a moment. “Wait, Paige, the patrols left on two roads, right?”
“Yeah,” the brunette said. “Half of them went north and the other half went south.”
“Perfect,” I said.
“What’s the plan?” Tara asked.
“We’re going to split up,” I said, and I called Brody and his team over to us.
“What’s up?” Brody asked, and he eyed the women behind me carefully.
“The building is still on fire,” I said. “If the patrols show up then they’re going to know something is wrong. We can’t let them get this far. We need to split up and meet them on the road.”
“They took the highway up north out of town,” Paige said.
“You take north,” I said, “we’ll take south. We should be able to get all of them there if we wait long enough.”
“Alright,” he said, and he gestured at the women on the steps, “and what are you going to do with them?”
“Let me worry about that,” I said. I knew exactly what we were going to do, but I wasn’t about to tell Brody a damn thing about where those women were going to be.
“Suit yourself,” he said, and he pressed his tongue to the side of his cheek and eyed me carefully before he turned around to his men. “Move out.”
After Brody and his team had walked away, Anna, Tara, and I moved the jeeps full of ammo and weapons over to the furthest part of the perimeter away from the science building. There was no room in them for anyone to ride so we’d have to leave them there for the moment, but I didn’t want them to catch on fire in the meantime. I grabbed a couple of M16s, though, and a
box of ammo to leave with the women for while we were gone.
While we parked the jeeps, I had instructed Paige and Bailey to help the women collect any items of theirs from the English building. When I returned, though, I saw that they didn’t have anything new on them, and I figured they probably didn’t have anything to take. Either that or whatever they did have they didn’t want as a reminder of their time there.
Once the jeeps were parked, we led the women back to our campsite and showed them how to turn the propane stove on. We also left them with all of the canned goods and smoked meat and told them to cook whatever they wanted while we were gone, but that we’d be back after we finished with the men on patrol. I also showed them how to use the M16s in case they needed them.
“You’re just going to leave us with these guns?” the dirty blonde asked after I showed her how to take the safety off and reload.
“Of course,” I said. “I don’t think you’ll need to use them, but if anybody comes by, then don’t hesitate to shoot.”
“Okay,” she said in a small voice, “thank you.”
“Get something to eat while we’re gone,” I said, and then I hopped into the jeep, and the rest of the girls followed suit.
“Geez,” Tara breathed once we were on the road headed south. “They just look so scared it breaks my heart.”
“I know,” I said softly. “But we’ll help them however we can.”
“The women from the compound were scared of men when they agreed to work with us,” Bailey said. “And now they seem like they’re getting along just fine.”
“That’s true,” Tara sighed.
“You gotta believe that people can overcome bad stuff,” Bailey said. “If they were strong enough to survive it, then I think they’re strong enough to overcome it.”
“Damn, Bailey,” Paige said. “That was nicely put.”
