by Lou Cadle
Wait.... Wait. Silence, and the sound of a magazine being inserted. Dev raised his rifle just above ground level and fired without looking, aiming high, not wanting to hit another kid. The kid to his right screamed again. That was good. He was still alive, at least. Terrified, but breathing.
Dev snatched his rifle back down. The next burst of three came closer. The man had him now, knew exactly where he was, if not about the spider hole.
Okay, okay. Stay calm. He can’t get me through dirt. He’ll have to come closer to get me. I’ll hear him approach. If he comes closer, I have as good a chance as he has. Better.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that.
Dev hadn’t been praying much lately, but he sent up a prayer now: Save me, save my family, save these little kids. He backed up his prayer by ejecting his magazine and loading a fresh one. God helps those who help themselves.
“Hey, wait!” The shooter. “Damn you.”
Dev took his chance. He popped up over the lip of the spider hole, rifle raised, and fired, blindly the first time, hoping he wouldn’t hit the kid. But the kid had gotten himself loose and was on the run, crashing through the forest. The shooter turned back to Dev, and Dev unloaded three rounds into his chest. He fell.
Dev pulled himself out of the spider hole and turned for the other kid, who was on his face in the pine needles. Shit. Dev went to his side and touched his shoulder, meaning to flip him over to see what damage had been done. But the instant he applied pressure, the kid yelped.
“It’s okay. I’m a good guy,” Dev said.
“Don’t shoot me!” he said.
“I won’t.” He worked at the knots holding the kid to the body. “Here, I need you to do something for me.”
“What?” The kid raised a tear-streaked, filthy face to him.
“I need you to hide. Like hide and seek. And you stay there until I call come in free.” He tore at the knots in the rope, finally getting one end to move.
“Where?”
“I’ll show you. Be quick, now.” The knot came loose.
Dev led the kid to the spider hole. “It’s a great hiding place. I’ll even put branches over it so no one can see you, okay?”
“Will it be dark?”
“No.”
“Where’s my mom?”
“I don’t know. Did she come in the car?”
He shook his head.
“Back home, I bet. Wanting to hear you’re okay. So let’s make sure you are.” Dev slung his rifle over his shoulder and reached out both hands. “I’ll lower you in.”
“What if I can’t climb out?”
“I’ll come back for you. Stay put until I do, okay? There are bad men around.”
The kid looked doubtful. But when another grenade exploded down by the road, that decided him. He reached for Dev’s hands, and Dev gripped him under the arms and lowered him into the spider hole. He had to drop him the last foot, but he warned the kid he was going to, and he landed well.
“Wait,” the kid said, as Dev turned away.
“What?”
“I have to pee.”
“Go ahead. No one will be watching.”
“In here?”
“Sure,” Dev said. “Stay put. Don’t worry if you hear another shot in a second.” That was in case he needed to finish either of the two attackers with a head shot. He checked both of the men he had shot. Both dead. He took their rifles and slung them over his shoulder, hoping he wouldn’t be called on to fire at anyone before he dumped them. They unbalanced him.
The next spider hole seemed like a good temporary storage place for them, so he aimed for that. Two more rifles were a good acquisition, but what he really wanted was that grenade launcher. He’d risk getting shot for a chance at capturing that.
A burst of gunfire from the private road made him move faster. He found the empty spider hole, dumped the rifles in, and glanced around to see if there was something like a downed branch to throw on top of them. Nope. No time to mess with finding one. Head for the firefight.
He whistled the “friend” signal as he wove through the trees. The gunfire ahead escalated. He couldn’t tell for sure how many weapons were being fired, but it was far more than three. Ten to twelve, he guessed.
Let’s see, call it two men per car, seven cars, with only one surviving in that back car, the driver. Curt surely got one or two early on. Two more, Dev himself had just killed. Should be eleven or twelve enemies remaining, one with a grenade launcher.
As if his thought had pulled its trigger, another grenade detonated. From the sound of it, it was close to their road. The urge to run forward was nearly overwhelming, but he made himself slow down, watch the woods, and remember the tripwire. Use caution. Think, don’t just act.
He came out of the woods right behind the rabbit hutches.
A whistle, close by. Not from his house, from his left. “Mom?” he said.
She rapped on the wood of the hutch. He circled around to her side.
Rudy was there, no weapon in his hands. He had his arms wrapped around himself. “Five down,” he said to his mother. “Sit rep?”
“They’re on the main road. Curt is firing from the woods on the other side. We have Sierra and Joan in the woods of our property, right next to the gravel road. Dad’s still up on the roof, without a shot at them yet. I was on our road too, but I came back to meet you.”
“Pilar?”
“He’s defending our rear, with the Kershaw girls.”
He was glad to hear they hadn’t lost anyone yet. “You see the kids they brought?”
“Yeah. It’s making it harder to fire. I think we’re shooting over heads more than hitting them. You know they have grenades?”
“Launcher. One of those under-rifle ones.”
“Good to know. What’s the range on those?”
“Not sure. Two hundred yards at least, I’d think. Dad would know.”
“Now that you’re here, we should move. Stick together.”
“Let’s keep to the trees,” he said. “Not in the open with those grenades flying.”
“What should I do?” Rudy said.
“You should crawl under the hutches and be quiet,” Dev’s mother said. Over Rudy’s head, she gave Dev a look.
Dev took it to mean Rudy wasn’t going to be useful.
“I want to help,” he said.
“Stay safe. Live to fight another day. That’ll help the most,” his mother said. “Let’s go,” she said to Dev, and she moved back into the woods.
Dev trailed her, checking to the sides and behind, letting her take point. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her fall. For a terrible moment, he thought she’d been shot.
Then she said, “Idiot!” under her breath, and he realized she’d fallen over the tripwire. She scrambled up and motioned for him to take the lead.
He did, moving toward all the noise. There were shouts, male voices, no one he knew. Then a sound he couldn’t place: a grinding. More gunfire.
“Heave!” came a clear voice. “Heave!”
The grinding sound again. He realized they were moving the log aside. They could drive in then, and that wouldn’t be good. Cars provided good cover. And it could get them up to the Morrow place, where the Kershaw girls were. The thought made him move faster. Silence didn’t matter now, just speed.
He knew exactly where he wanted to be: a pair of pines that grew close together near where the dirt road met the highway. Get them while their hands were busy with hauling the log. Faster and faster he moved, until he saw through the trees the empty air where the road was. Then he slowed. His mother caught up, touched his arm to let him know where she was, and he aimed himself to the right, where he saw the very trees he wanted. He could shoot from between them and have some cover, or dodge behind either one.
When his mother stopped, he looked back and saw her pointing. She’d picked her own big pine tree to use as cover. He realized he’d never fought with her, firing side by side. A strange feeling of pride came over him, but he
shook it off. Nothing emotional. Just be a machine. Aim, fire, and hit your target.
He made it to the pair of trees without being spotted. Ahead of him a few yards, and three feet lower, seven men—no, eight—had the tree moved out. A ninth man was calling out, “Heave!” The log moved another four or five inches. The one yelling had a little girl, maybe six or seven years old, in his arms. Looked like all of the other kids he could see were tied to the men. To keep them from running, he imagined. But it would also keep them from moving fast to cover if he shot the man they were tethered to.
They’d counted on the psychological effect to help them. No one would want to fire into a group of children. That made Dev steel his mind. He wasn’t going to let that work on him. It was like a day of target practice. Nothing more, nothing less.
There was already enough room between the shifted tree and their road to drive a small car through. Raising the scope to his eye, he picked a man, one on the far right. Basic procedure. His mother was standing to the left, so she would start on the left. For the last second, the invaders still didn’t know they were both up here.
Then his mother opened fire. Single shots. Dev rushed his first shot. The man in his sights froze, and then lunged, trying to launch himself over the tree. That worked for Dev. He fired at the guy’s butt and hit him. Forget him—next man. He was on the move. Dev tracked him and fired, center mass. The guy stopped. Looked surprised. Looked down and touched himself. Dev shot him again. Moved to find a third man without waiting to see if the second one fell.
The third man—now he was a problem. He’d snatched up the kid he was connected to and was using him as a shield. A hand emerged from the side of the terrified-looking child (don’t think about that) with a handgun, a semi-auto. He fired at Dev and Dev pulled back behind the tree. The guy was a good shot. Three rounds hit the tree, and Dev both heard them and felt the force of them transmit itself through the wood. A forty-five, he was guessing, maybe even a .480 Ruger.
A shout came from the leader who’d been directing the log’s removal.
And then the world exploded.
Chapter 20
Dev came to—though “came to” wasn’t exactly the right term. He hadn’t been unconscious. Just very, very stunned. He was on his back, covered with wood chips.
His mom. He turned his head to where he thought she was, but realized he’d gotten himself turned around and was looking in the wrong direction. Then, as his head cleared, he thought maybe he shouldn’t move. He looked up. Both the trees he’d been standing behind were cracked off, low on the trunk. The bulk of both had fallen toward him. But the forest canopy had caught the one, and it hung above him several feet.
The other had fallen nearly to the ground, but its branches had stopped it from hitting the ground. Or hitting him. His lucky day.
He took the chance of tilting his head back to check on his mother. Her tree was intact. She was on the ground, her hands still over her head.
“Mom,” he said. His own voice sounded as if it was a mile away.
She looked up, gave him the sign to stay still, and jumped to her feet. In five seconds, she was firing again.
“No,” he said, but the sound was lost in gunfire—hers and theirs. He didn’t want them to launch another grenade at her. The tree ahead of him was shadowing him, and they might think they had killed him. That made him safe for now. His retreat would be a dangerous thing.
Not that he was inclined to move at this moment. But he had to. His father’s voice told him to, a voice inside his head. Man up, Devlin.
“Dang it,” his mother said. Or he thought that’s what she said. She ejected her magazine and popped in another.
When she began to fire, Dev moved, rolling at first until he was on his belly. Wait. Where was his rifle? He cast his glance around and felt increasing panic when he didn’t see it at first.
There. By his foot. He reached for it, tried twice, finally caught the strap with the toe of his boot. He pushed it up, up, until his fingertips could reach the strap. He wound it around his fingers, and got ready to stand and move. Next time his mother reloaded. Wait for it. Wait.
He whistled the retreat (can’t hear that, but I think I made a sound) as soon as he heard the ejection of her spent magazine. Then she fired again, he pushed up to hands and knees and all the way up, then he sprinted away from the road.
Actually, he only tried to sprint. Stagger was more like it. The force of the grenade had rattled his brain or his ears or something that affected his balance.
But he staggered on, and he wasn’t hit, and by the time he fell, he had made it ten yards back to a patch of scrub oaks. They’d been well gnawed by deer, he noticed, as he looked up at them. Stunted their growth. Poor things could never get a good start on life.
That made him think of those kids out there, being used as shields. And that made him grit his teeth and tell himself to quit whining. Shake it off. There’s work to be done!
The thought came to him—and it was late in coming—that he had to cover his mother’s retreat. He rolled to his belly and aimed out over where his trees had been.
Firewood for the winter, came a thought, unbidden.
Man, his brain was not working right. He aimed well to the right of his mother and squeezed the trigger. Then thought belatedly to tell his mother it was covering fire. Then, even more belatedly, thought, Well, she knows that now, doesn’t she?
His mother moved just then, running back, running low.
And then she was flying.
Hey, I didn’t know she could fly. The stupid thought was followed by a smarter one. Another grenade had just detonated. His mother landed with a thump hard enough to feel, back and to the left of him. He crawled to her. “Mom, Mom,” he said. Everything he knew about their signal system and correct battle procedure flew from his memory. He needed to know she was okay.
She was crumpled on the ground. She had landed on a low bush of some sort, face down. He rolled her over, and she dropped the last six inches to the ground. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that, came the thought. Again, it was late in coming. “Mom?”
But she just lay there.
Chapter 21
Sierra watched that jerk load up the grenade launcher again. She knew someone she cared for was up there—Dev, she’d bet, or Kelly and Arch—and they’d already been hit by grenades twice.
“Well, screw it,” she said. All the invaders’ attention seemed to be focused on that section of the woods where the grenades had landed. They’d stopped dragging the log, and one of them was struggling with a kid who was trying to run and throwing him off-balance. Sierra sprinted across the road, willing herself to be invisible. She was going to come up on their other side, where they didn’t think anyone was.
She made it without a single round being fired at her. She was safe for now—unless whoever was down here—Curt, she thought—mistook her for an enemy. She waited until there was a lull in the noise, then whistled the signal to tell Curt she was a friend—and where she was. You heard that particular sound, and you didn’t fire anywhere close to that direction.
Joan let off another couple rounds from where she’d found cover. Sierra had been next to her ten minutes ago. She’d said to her, “Your kids are back there at home. It’s your job to keep anyone from getting past this point and get to them.” It might have been a low thing to do, to remind her of her children at a time like this, but when Joan had seen that the invaders had children with them, she had said, “I can’t shoot at them. What if I hit a child?” So that’s what Sierra had told her.
She didn’t want to shoot one of those children any more than Joan did, but she believed her own skill with the rifle was good enough that she wouldn’t. All she needed to do was keep her wits about her. Take careful aim.
The bastard with the little girl in his arms was safe as long as he kept her there. Sierra wanted to get him most of all. Get him because he was doing that despicable thing. Who were these men, that they’d rape pret
eens and hold up smaller kids to protect themselves? They made her sick. They deserved to die.
She made her way forward, weaving through the scrubby woods. The cover on this side wasn’t as good, with almost none of the thick pine trunks that she’d rather be standing behind. There were some out near the main road, but she wouldn’t make it that far.
On the other hand, maybe the lack of good cover would make them think no one would be moving as she was, closer, closer. She brought to bear everything Arch and Dev had taught her about woodcraft, paying attention to what branches she stirred, to timing her movements so that her progress wasn’t obvious to anyone glancing this way. Start. Stop. Check overhead. Wait for a breeze to stir the woods. She was squat-walking by this point, and her thighs began to burn. She pushed the pain aside. Closer. And once you start shooting again, make your shots count.
She had moved enough she worried that Curt would think, if he saw the movement in the scrub, that it was an enemy. She wanted to whistle. But she also wanted to stay quiet. She got a glimpse of the men by the log. A dozen more yards, and she’d be at the range where she had damned good accuracy at target practice. Half a dozen yards to go.
She crossed the distance and looked around to see where she might be able to get to another place with a better view. A click came from ahead and her left, a human signal. Curt, moving her way. She clicked back. Ahead, the brush thinned out. No cover, but she could see from there. She hadn’t had much practice shooting prone, but it’d be safer if she was going to give up the scant cover.
The last few feet, she crawled, knees and hips and elbows all pushing her forward. Then she pulled herself up.
She found the man holding the little girl. Still no shot. She scanned down, looking at his legs, but the girl’s legs dangled down to almost his knees. She didn’t trust herself enough firing from this position to aim for the knee. Besides, he was shifting all the time.
No clear shot. Look for the next. There were three men down on the road, and only six standing. Was that all there was left? She hoped.
She hadn’t heard any gunfire for a minute from the Quinn position. Only Joan’s rifle sounded from their force right now. In a second, the invaders would understand that they were vulnerable, and they might guess that troops were moving against them.
