by Kate Morris
Five minutes or five hours later, she’s not sure which, Paige is awakened out of a dead sleep by an earthquake. Something has caused the ground to tremble beneath her.
“What was that?” Sam asks sleepily next to her.
“Earthquake?”
Then she hears screaming and gunfire and the town’s new siren warning system going off. It sounds like something from a movie about World War II during the London bombings, like an air raid siren. Only this time there aren’t tunnels and underground subway systems in which to hide.
“Not an earthquake,” she corrects.
“No,” Sam agrees. “Grab your gear.”
Her hand automatically reaches for the pistol under her pillow and the rifle on the floor beside her cot. Within seconds she has her pants on just as another blast rocks the cement floor under her feet. She snatches her backpack just in case and notices that Sam does, as well. Paige pulls on her ankle boots.
“Paige, hurry!” Sam screams as she rushes into action, as well. “Let’s go!”
She needs no encouragement. They run from the room, both carrying guns. As they exit the building, Lucas jogs over to them. Paige has come to like him very much. He’s a good man and an even better big brother to G, who he looks after as if his life depends upon it. Of course, Gretchen much like herself, believes she is invincible and doesn’t need her brother looking out for her.
“What’s going on?” she yells over the melee. It sounds like bombs are being detonated on their small town. Floodlights are aimed at the area beyond the border fencing and wall. Men are shouting. People are screaming. Children are crying. The town’s militia force seems to be running in all directions. It’s complete and total chaos, and that damn siren keeps going off. It’s ear-splitting.
“We’re under attack,” he shouts. “Try to find cover. I’m heading to the wall. We can’t let them get in.”
“I’m coming, too,” Sam interjects.
“No way,” he argues. “Just protect the children.”
He runs off again as another bomb strikes at their wall, causing the ground to shake.
“Let’s go, Paige,” Sam says and tugs her sleeve.
After jogging with her friend for a few seconds, Paige realizes they are not heading back to the children’s hospital. “Where are we going?”
“I’m not going to worry about the kids right now,” she says. “We’re going to help.”
“Oh, ok,” Paige answers and keeps pace.
The sound of a whistling, incoming round assaults her ears.
“Get down!” she yells and yanks Sam around the end of a brick building that used to be a store.
Not twenty yards from them, a home is hit with whatever kind of bomb was just let loose on their town. She thinks Cory calls them artillery rounds or shells or bombs. She’s not sure. She just doesn’t want one to land on her or Sam.
“Where are we going?” she asks her friend as they keep going.
“The other end of town,” she answers. “Those jerks flanked the guys last week. They’re gonna do it here, too. I guarantee.”
“Got it,” she says and picks up the pace.
By the time they arrive at the section of fencing that was just completed near Jay’s old village, Paige is slightly winded. Sam must be, as well, but she climbs the wooden stairs to the top of the wall where a walkway has been erected for guards. They both drop to their knees and extract night-vision headgear from their bags.
“Spread out,” Sam orders. “See what you can see.”
Paige jogs about ten yards from her and peers over the fence. She doesn’t see anything. Another twenty-five yards from her is a guard post. He sees her and sends an all-clear wave in her direction which she returns. This end of town is quiet, so she low jogs back to Sam, who is coming toward her.
“See anything?” she whispers.
“Not yet,” Sam answers. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this, though.”
“Think we should go back to the other side and see if they need our help?”
Sam pauses a long time before saying, “No, I think they’ll come this way.”
“Let’s get our communication devices on so we can hear what’s going on over there,” she says. “Simon’s still here. I want to make sure he’s ok.”
“He is,” Sam says with confidence as she rummages her pack.
Robert McClane sent a runner to the family with more equipment, which was greatly appreciated. Now each person has the ability to wear throat mics and earpieces in order to communicate without radios when they are away from home together. He also sent more guns and ammunition. Between his contribution and the items they’ve confiscated from the highwaymen, Paige thinks they could wage another world war.
Sam is saying something about Simon when Paige shushes her. “Did you hear that?” she whispers. Sam shakes her head, but they both listen intently.
Then Paige hears it again. Men’s voices. Someone out there in the dark is talking beyond their fence and likely near or in Jay’s old village. Sam whips around and sends a signal with a flashlight toward the guard on her side. Paige does the same. They are letting them know they aren’t alone and won’t be safe for long.
Paige crawls over to a peephole, specifically cut into the wall for sentries to spy on anyone who might be coming at them. For the first minute, she sees nothing. Then she spies the low, incandescent beams of several flashlights.
“Sam…” she states to gain her friend’s attention.
“I see them,” she whispers back.
“We have incoming on Jay’s side of the village, south side,” Paige says into her throat mic.
Sam adds, “They’re running around the houses in Jay’s side of town. It looks like they’re pulling equipment in a wagon, maybe artillery. We need backup stat, over.”
“What the hell are you two doing over there?” Simon’s voice comes over Paige’s earpiece, hurting her ears at the decibel. She flinches, not from the sound but from his tone. Her brother is furious.
“Stay there. Stand down. We’re on our way,” he shouts breathlessly as if he is running.
“We may not be able to,” Sam says to Paige as she points to their left. “We’ve got incoming,” she says, pressing her hand against her throat mic again. “We’re gonna have to engage.”
“Stand down,” Simon orders.
Her petite friend ignores Simon but murmurs under her breath to herself, “I don’t take orders from you anymore. Get ready, Paige.”
“Yep,” Paige answers and scoots away again.
She takes a one-kneed stance as Cory taught her, pushes a rubbery earplug into her ear to protect against the onslaught of the noise she knows is coming, and pokes her rifle through the slat in the fence’s wall. Sam is right. They can’t wait. There is a group of at least fifty men coming toward them over a small hill from Jay’s village. The others are still in the background running around with their flashlights, but these people are coming without fear or hesitation.
“Wait until they’re within firing range,” Sam says.
“You call it, little sister,” Paige calls over to her quietly.
“Get ready,” Sam says into her throat mic to the other men who are further down from them.
Below her, Paige hears footsteps on the stairs. Others have come to join their fight. Two men from town squat on either side of her and ready their weapons.
“Let them get closer,” Sam reiterates.
“You got it, Miss Sam,” one of the men says.
They wait what seems like forever. A round of something horrible and powerful lands behind them somewhere, breaking Paige’s eardrums and rattling but not felling their platform. She steadies herself.
“Sons-a-bitches are firing mortar rounds on us,” the man beside her says. She forgets his name but knows he came with the people from the armory in Ohio with Cory. He’s older and teaches the children history lessons at the library.
“Fire now. Fire at will,” Sam says softly.
&n
bsp; What follows is neither soft nor quiet. Each man and woman on the wall, including Paige, begins picking off the people coming at them with a heavy deluge of firepower. Paige even manages to wing one in the leg. Her gun is set to semi-automatic, which Cory says is better in battle than wasteful blasts of fully auto. She’d argued and told him she needs all the help she can get, to which he’d laughed.
Paige takes aim at another runner and misses. The man beside her fires and hits him. She’d like to thank him, but the men running toward the fence are returning fire now. She screams and ducks down as a round pings off of the steel pole in front of her. Then she kneels again and fires back at the jerk and hits him in the shoulder. The man beside her finishes him off.
Someone down the line yells, “Grenade!” and throws one over the fence at the crowd since they are within ten yards. It is a direct hit, but others keep coming. A new hoard has popped up from their north and is running toward the fence. Paige watches in horror as a few manage to scale it with what look like grappling hooks and ropes. It is primitive but effective because one manages to climb up and over. He jumps on the man Sam had signaled to and is about to stab him. She pulls her rifle free of the hole and takes aim at the invader. Too late. Someone else shoots him, someone from the ground. She looks in time to see Simon take aim again and shoot another who is just about to crest the fence over there, as well. Her brother doesn’t even slow down. He’s firing at a full sprint and still hitting his targets. It reminds her of how much experience he has at this and also makes Paige sad that his youth is forever gone. The man dies with half of his body hanging over one side of the wall and the other half dangling on the opposite side.
She watches as her brother climbs the stairs as fast and stealthily as a panther to assist the other man with keeping the enemy from breaching their wall. Simon never ceases to surprise her.
Paige turns her attention back to the task before her and takes aim again. Their comrade on the platform further down from them screams out in pain.
Sam yells out, “I’m going after him!”
Then she climbs down like an agile ninja and runs to the other platform. Paige turns her attention toward the men who will soon crest the wall where her friend has just gone to help their fallen ally. The man beside her does the same just as another round of heavy, automatic gunfire flies at them from the enemy. Paige ducks instinctively lower and fires back through the wall. She hits one, and the man goes down.
“Incoming!” someone on the line screams.
A few seconds later, that whistling sound comes again, and the ground shakes, her ears crack, and she is put on her back from the blow. It has hit closer this time. Slowly, she rises again and seeks out another target. That’s when she notices the man beside her is down.
“Are you ok…?” she asks but stops when she sees the bullet hole in his head.
“He’s gone!” the history teacher yells and points toward the enemy still coming as if to get her back in the fight.
She looks to her left and watches Simon sight in and fire toward the men on the machine launching large shells on them. She is sure he hit his target because he fires two more rounds and climbs down.
Paige quickly looks around. Her brother runs over and shouts to her to get down from the platform, then past her toward Sam’s perch. Paige peeks through the slats again. More men are trying to climb the wall near Sam. She isn’t getting down. She has to help her friend.
She aims in, flicks the small lever to fully automatic and blasts off a lot of rounds. Men go running on the ground. Some fall from their ropes. The history teacher follows suit and does the same with his own rifle. The invaders scream out in pain and yell to one another to fall back. She vaguely hears her brother calling for backup. The man who teaches history is still with her in this fight, and together they manage to subdue their oppressors as they regain courage and come at them again in another wave of about sixty men.
Somewhere else in the town she can hear large rounds hitting the ground hard enough to make her feet vibrate. How many of those heavy rounds do these people have? She hopes they run out soon. She can only pray for the safety of the others in the village as she continues to lay down a barrage of tap-tap-taps at the men trying to approach their wall of safety again. Beside her, a new comrade joins their battle and starts taking out people with single shots. He obviously has a lot more experience than she does at this.
After what seems like a long firefight, the invaders, what is left of them, begin retreating. The men on the wall continue shooting at them. Paige does not. She doesn’t want to shoot someone in the back. She has to draw the line somewhere, even if those men want to take over their town and probably kill everyone in it, Paige just can’t shoot someone in the back who is running for their lives in fear.
“Regroup,” Simon says in her earpiece.
She taps her shooting partner on the shoulder and indicates that she is going to join her brother. He nods in compliance and resumes sniping at the retreating bandits. Then she rushes to the base of Simon’s platform where he meets her. He is instructing men to carry the injured soldier to the clinic on a stretcher. Sam is right there with him.
“Get out of here,” he orders her. “Go with Sam to the clinic.”
“But…”
“Reinforcements are on their way,” he explains. “John, Kelly, and Cory are back with Robert’s men, and Dave’s got men coming, too. You’re gonna end up with a goddamn mortar round landing on your head. Leave!”
“What about you?”
“I’m going to the clinic, and I’m going to need help,” her brother answers as a large group of men approach at a run from around the corner. Their reinforcements have arrived. “Come with me and help. Doc’s not here. Sam’s uncle isn’t here. It’s just us. There are bound to be more wounded.”
She nods with nerves that are even worse than when she was shooting at people. She knows nothing about emergency medicine, only what she’s picked up since arriving at the McClane farm. Trauma medicine is better suited to her brother, but she jogs alongside him and Sam back to the clinic to the background music of mortar fire, gunfire and the shouting of men in an all-out battle for their lives.
“I hope they’re ok,” she says.
“They’ll be fine. They’ve got more experience than all of us combined,” he answers.
“I wish we could’ve done more. I missed so many shots,” Paige complains.
“You did fine. I was watching. You both did very well,” he praises. Then, of course, he adds, “But you should’ve listened and stayed out of that.”
“Shut up, Simon,” Sam says with an angry sneer that actually comes off as cute and adorable.
Paige has to hold back a laugh. Her little friend sure knows how to put her brother in his place. When she peeks at Simon expecting a glower, he is, instead, grinning lopsidedly. And if she’s not mistaken, grinning with a touch of admiration mixed in.
Chapter Four
Sam
She works with Paige and Simon until John shows up with Reagan. Three men from the town have been shot. Others have been injured by the mortar fire throwing debris and injuring them. This is just like the attack on the condo community. They’d been lucky in town so far not to take a direct assault from the highwaymen, but apparently, they now know of Pleasant View and have set their sights on their town. Sam hopes the men kill all of them.
“Clamp,” Simon requests quietly as she works on the opposite side of the table from him. Paige is in another room with Reagan, who was quickly brought to town, as well. They are taking care of more victims. She hopes Paige is faring well. Lately, she hasn’t seemed like she’s a hundred percent healthy and has been unusually pale.
“There it is, Simon,” she tells him, indicating with a stainless steel medical tool toward another bleeder.
“Got it, thanks,” he says and meets her eyes briefly.
Their patient moans. Sam is thankful the building housing the sick children has not been hit by mortar
fire.
“Sorry, Mr. Killbuck,” Sam says with sympathy.
He just nods and moans again in pain. Grandpa and Simon have been working on an herbal blend of kava, ginseng, white willow bark and valerian root to suppress pain. They are having success but worry about post-operative bleeding. They also aren’t sure just yet how much to dose a patient depending on their size and weight. However, they’ve given Mr. Killbuck a very minimal dose and for the amount of digging around they’ve done on his side, a small moan here and there is nothing compared to the pain he should be experiencing.
She pauses at the same time Simon does. He says, “The shooting’s stopped.”
“That has to be a good sign,” she comments quietly.
“Here, Sam,” Simon indicates with his tool where he needs the area swabbed of blood so that he can see. She does so. “Thank you. Mosquito forceps, please.”
She slaps them into his palm.
“Thank you,” he replies calmly as he extracts the bullet. It lands in the tray with a clank.
“Needle holder?” she asks.
“Yes, please,” he says courteously. “We’ll have you fixed up in just a moment, Mr. Killbuck. The bullet’s out.”
“Thanks, Doc,” he says. “You kids are doing great.”
Sam smiles at the ‘kids’ comment but then with sympathy at his pain and dabs at his sweaty brow. Simon is considered a legitimate doctor by everyone in town. She glances up at him briefly as he begins sewing and then moving one of his clamps. His hands do not shake even though he was just in a firefight. He is steady, calm, professional and a whole lot more poised than she ever thought he’d be someday when they were just ‘kids.’
