by Kate Morris
“That Parker prick comin’ with us?” Dave asks.
Grandpa breaks in to answer, “No, he left this morning to change out with new men. Normally they wait until the new group arrives, but Parker took one man and left. Raj, I think. I’m not sure. I didn’t see him leave. He just said he wanted to discuss this with my son and then left.”
“Is he going to be in this fight with us next week?” Kelly asks, his reluctance to have Parker with them as obvious as Dave’s opinion of the man by the scowl on his face.
Grandpa asks, “You don’t want him?”
“Hell, no!” Kelly says, causing the other men to laugh. “That guy’s a royal pain in the ass when it comes time to fighting. He tries to override Dave or Derek’s orders, gets in the way mostly. It’s like going into a battle with Arianna.”
They laugh harder this time. Ari is also not good at taking orders. She’s somewhat of a tyrant, but they all love her just the same. Even her father laughs at the comparison.
“Alright, I’ll tell Robert not to say anything to him,” Grandpa states.
“Better yet, tell him we’re attacking next Friday,” Dave says, earning chuckles. Then he winks at Sam and says, “We’re goin’ in Wednesday.”
“Right, Thursday’s turkey day!” Cory says about the holiday.
“And then there’s football games to watch and Black Friday shopping,” John states.
“Maybe shopping for you, ya’ homo,” Dave jeers.
Sam slaps her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. That is an inappropriate and certainly not a politically correct thing to call someone. Of course, this is Dave. He doesn’t exactly conform to society’s rules of etiquette. His wife jokes with Sam about him often saying that he wasn’t meant for decent society and that he should’ve been born about three hundred years ago. Sam has heard the men on the farm talking like that, too. When the women aren’t around, or they think the women can’t hear them, they can rip on each other pretty badly.
“What?” John asks, rolling with it. “I need some new khakis and cardigans to go with my tassel loafers.”
They all laugh again, and it feels good to laugh, even briefly because, lately, things haven’t been going their way, there hasn’t been much to laugh about. None of them likes being on the wrong side of a win.
The meeting adjourns, a schedule for radio calls each night is set up, and a rotation of watchdogs on the new highwaymen lair is made for the rest of the week. She is going to ask Dave later if she can be a part of that rotation. She wants to help, even if it is only on one of the spying missions.
Sam limps to the barn to check on Storm and one of the new foals.
“Hey, Sam,” Paige says, coming up behind her in front of the door to Storm’s stall. They are keeping him stabled a few days just in case. He is a young horse and was badly spooked by whatever happened to him. A few days in the barn will help calm him.
“Hi,” she greets her friend. “What’s going on?”
“The guys are making plans to leave again,” she tells her. “Simon, Cory, Kelly, they’re leaving in just a few minutes to take a watch duty on the new location. I guess Derek wants a better layout of the area around that mansion. Herb’s working with him right now telling him what he remembers from touring it.”
“Are you going?”
She shakes her head, “No, I’d like to, but John said maybe tomorrow night. He doesn’t want me there during the day in case they’re spotted.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” she says. “Hey, I was thinking about going tomorrow night if I’m allowed. If you go, too, then we can work together.”
Paige chuckles and says, “Yeah, I don’t know if that’s such a great idea. Last time I was in charge of you, I lost you.”
Sam laughs. “No, you didn’t.”
“I brought your bag down for you,” she tells her.
“Oh, thanks,” Sam says. “You saw.”
Paige nods. “Yeah, I figured you were leaving.”
“Sorry,” she apologizes and secures the latch on the stall door. “I need to get back.”
“I understand,” Paige says and hugs her.
It’s hard leaving like this, but for Sam, it’s harder staying. She’s glad when she mounts up with Dave’s group and Henry that Simon is nowhere to be seen. She sends a wave to the few family members who are outside and tries not to look in the side mirror out her window as they pull away.
Chapter Nineteen
Paige
“I see three men walking toward the woods in the back yard, Simon,” she tells her brother quietly beside her.
It has been three days since Dave and Henry confirmed that these were the highwaymen. Tonight, she is helping her brother and Kelly spy on them. It takes everything in her not to run across the field and gain the attention of the women. She wants them to know that in two days there will be an attack on this compound so that they can stay out of the way and not be accidentally hurt in the fight. Better yet, she’d like to transplant the entire farm and their friends and allies and these women to another state. She even shared this fear earlier on the ride over here with Kelly and Simon, and Kelly had conveyed that there are assholes everywhere, that this isn’t a solitary action by one group of jerks. He’s probably right. She saw a lot of this on the road with her friends but not at this level of organization and definitely not with these numbers. It was usually just a few creeps here and there robbing people and killing them. Most of the time, they didn’t murder but just stole from those who were weaker than them. This is crime on an entirely more sophisticated level.
“I’ve got them,” he says, confirming a visual on the men. He presses his mic and tells Kelly, who answers immediately.
“Movement about a click to the south,” her brother says. “Looks like flashlights or torches. Bastards are running patrols.”
He has been in a particularly sour mood since Sam left the farm and she hasn’t had a chance to talk to him about it. He isn’t angry like he used to be when she’d leave. Now he seems more worried. Paige doesn’t know if he is concerned that Sam will be in danger away from the farm or if he is concerned she has moved on and has chosen Henry. Paige doesn’t think she has, but she also didn’t get a chance to talk to her best friend before she left the other day.
Tonight will be her only intel mission with them. There isn’t time for many more. In two days they will attack this compound with everything they have. She has sat in on most of the planning meetings, even the ones done over the radio with Dave, K-Dog, and Robert McClane. Some of it she hadn’t understood, especially when they talked about the different types of explosives they’d be using or the tactical language about what will happen and when. She got the general idea of it all, though, and what she heard had scared the hell out of her.
“They’re running patrols,” her brother tells her. “Moving farther out every night.”
“Why?”
“They’re getting organized again,” he answers. “The move from the Gaylord to here threw them off for a few days, but now they’ve got themselves organized and disciplined again.”
“That’s not good.”
“It won’t matter soon enough,” he replies with deadly intent.
Paige sighs softly and whispers, “I wish you didn’t have to be involved in this.”
“I have to. Dave has another guy that’s good at long-range shooting, but they’ll need me, too. There’s no way possible that I’m not in this.”
She nods in the dark and says, “I know.”
“Let’s see where they go,” he says and rises. “Come on, Paige.”
She follows silently behind her brother as he leads her through the woods carefully so as not to be seen.
“I don’t see their lights anymore,” he says to her and stops in a less dense part of the forest. “I need to get up high and see what I can see.”
“I’ll do it,” she volunteers and hands him her rifle.
“Careful,” he warns.
&nbs
p; “I got this.”
Paige jumps vertically and hooks her hands around a low branch. Then she pulls herself up onto it by crawling her legs up the trunk. She goes higher and stops about twenty feet up. There, she perches on a thick branch and pulls out her binoculars. It takes a moment, but she finds the men on the patrol. She observes them silently for a few minutes until they change direction.
“Crap!” she hisses and scurries back down. “Simon, they’re coming this way.”
“Let’s go,” he says. “How the hell did they get this far so fast?”
She doesn’t answer, doesn’t care, but follows after him, sticking close to his heels. Her brother takes her down a small ravine and squats with her, silently waiting. The men pass right over top of the ridge above them unaware of their presence. After they are gone, Simon warns Kelly of their movement.
“I’m north of the compound with the Mechanic,” he returns.
Most of the night goes like this, gathering information, spying on the highwaymen, and getting a better lay of the land. Then they drive the truck through the surrounding neighborhoods. Simon sketches them out roughly on their maps.
“Do you think you guys will be ready for this in just two days? Paige asks. “Seems like a short amount of time for such a big battle.”
Kelly chuckles. “A lot of time we only had a few minutes to make whopping changes in a plan. We’ve got this.”
“Robert’s sending men tomorrow,” her brother says.
“Gonna be a little crowded for a couple of days on the farm, but it’s good to get to know your co-workers before you go and kill a bunch of people with them,” Kelly jokes as he veers around a child’s bicycle left discarded years ago in the street.
“I would think so,” Paige agrees, watching out the window and suddenly feeling sad as she looks around at the abandoned homes, their nice yards destroyed by not being maintained, their vehicles left in the driveways and parked on the streets covered in thick coatings of white dirt and dust, the playgrounds with fallen trees slicing through them and rusty swings hanging crookedly by only one chain. There used to be people here, living and thriving and raising their families. Now it’s empty, desolate like some sort of failed experiment.
Close to dawn, they head back to the farm with more information to share with the others. Sue and Reagan have prepared breakfast because Hannah is still sleeping. At the mention of Hannah not feeling well, Kelly immediately leaves them to go to her.
“Yeah, pregnancy sucks,” Reagan jokes as she tells them this. “First you’re tired all the time. Then you puke for no apparent reason. And the end comes with swollen ankles.”
Herb hugs her around her slim shoulders and says, “But we received the most precious gift of all…”
“Yeah, yeah, save it,” Reagan says, giving her grandfather a hard time. He pulls her in and kisses the side of her head. “Easy for you to say! You didn’t have to carry around a watermelon in your stomach for nine months.”
“No,” he says with a smile, “I suppose you’re right about that one, but I am appreciative to have her, even at your expense.”
Reagan rolls her eyes. “Well, you won’t be too appreciative that Hannah’s sick this morning. You all know cooking isn’t my specialty.”
Gretchen snorts from the other counter where she is slicing bread. “No, shit. That’s obvious.”
She and Reagan banter back and forth teasing each other.
Paige walks over to Sue at the stove and takes baby Daniel from her arms, “Let me take him, Sue. It’s hard enough preparing all this without holding a baby in one arm.”
She laughs and says, “Women have cooked and done a million other things since the dawn of man with a baby on one hip.”
Paige also chuckles as she looks down at the little guy. “Yes, that’s the truth. But we’ve all got each other. No need to struggle.”
“Thanks,” she replies gently as she pulls a cast iron skillet of cornbread from the oven and places it on a hot pad on the counter. “And can you make sure the kids are up and moving? I need the eggs collected.”
“Sure thing,” she says and spies steaming peppers and onions in another cast iron pan and figures Sue is going to scramble eggs into them. They are so good it should be a sin. She leaves to find the children as G and Reagan continue to harass each other.
Arianna is in the bathroom in the basement and tells Paige that her brother is out in the barn helping Cory milk the cows. Huntley was on patrol last night with Cory, so he’s still asleep. She tiptoes past his room and wakes Isaac and Mary. Toddlers sleep so hard. She convinces them to use the bathroom and manages to help them get dressed before going upstairs again. Mary is actually sleeping in the basement with the ‘big kids’ sometimes instead of with her parents. They’re all growing too fast.
More people have joined the melee as she feeds Daniel in the music room his bottle of goat milk. Her favorite spot in the whole house is probably the window seat that looks out over the back yard and part of the side yard near the driveway. The sun is actually out, which hasn’t happened much this dreary, cloudy and very rainy fall.
“Hey, Red,” Cory says from the doorway, startling her.
Automatically, her eyes jump around to make sure Simon isn’t overhearing them.
“Hi,” she returns with a grin.
“Everything go ok last night?” he asks with clear concern.
She nods.
“Better than when I took you and you got attacked in the bathroom at the Gaylord?” he jokes, although she can tell this still bothers him. He’d already apologized and stressed himself out way too much over this accident.
“No, no. Everything was fine that night and last night,” she says, although when it was happening, it hadn’t felt alright at all. She’d been scared out of her mind, and if it weren’t for help from Lilly, she might’ve been raped or killed that night. Her stealthy abilities were hindered by helping so many women escape. It was still worth it.
“Boy, he’s getting big,” Cory proclaims and sits next to her on the padded bench.
“I know. Crazy. Seems like yesterday when his mother was giving birth out in the shed.”
“Do you think when something like that happens, and a kid never knows their real mom that they always feel like something is missing?”
His serious tone and the nature of the question surprises her. Cory is usually less cognitive and more of a jokester. She considers his theory a moment before answering.
“I don’t know how a child growing up with five or six mothers would ever feel the absence of anything.”
He chuckles. “True. You all cuddle him so much he’ll probably be a sissy.”
“So?” she says defensively then smiles. “Maybe he’ll be a great philosopher or a historian or an artist.”
“Right. Sissy,” he replies with a smirk.
This is the Cory she has come to expect.
“Here, why don’t you take him so I can help the girls?” she suggests and passes him into his arms gently.
“Hey, bro,” he says to the infant, not even batting an eye at being given the baby. None of the men do that. They grab up the kids and help with them all the time. “I’ll show you how to hunt and skin a deer. I won’t let these girls make a wimp out of you.”
She rolls her eyes. “Ok, Neanderthal.”
He laughs heartily, causing a lock of dark hair to fall over his forehead. She has to resist the urge to push it back and press a kiss there in its absence. This thought makes her grimace as she walks away.
The rest of the day passes without incident or mishap, mostly because she sleeps for part of it, and after evening chores are completed, the family convenes in Herb’s den for more planning and strategy building.
“We’re setting up a blocking force on this road here,” Derek points out with a stick. “K-Dog’s men will be running that. Three men and a woman who was a firearms instructor before all this. K-Dog said she’s the best sniper he’s got.”
“G
ood, he’s got that exit covered,” John agrees.
Cory asks, indicating the road out through the south of the property that Paige knows leads to a massive abandoned neighborhood, “And here? What if they try to make a run for it over here?”
Derek says, “I’m putting eight of Robert’s men down there. Once it starts, we can’t have everyone sitting around waiting to see if they make a run for it. There could be stragglers. There usually is. But we need everyone we’ve got in this fight.”
“Agreed,” Kelly says. “What about the civilian casualties?”
“What do you mean?” Reagan asks.
He sighs, “There are women in the main house. A few that we’ve spotted- mostly workers are what we’re guessing- living or working in that learning center place.”
“The women in the main house and the ones in the learning center are probably armed,” Derek states. “Dave said he’s seen a few that were.”
“Agreed,” John says. “Lilly told us again yesterday when I went to town to talk to her that the women who traded their moral conscience for food and safety are all trusted by the men and have guns. Some of them have become highwaymen in all senses of the word. If they draw on you, take ‘em out. If they don’t, be careful anyway. This is going to be a tough call.”
Kelly says, “From what we’ve gathered, though, most of the women are in this building over here.”
“Right,” John agrees.
Derek tells him, “Kelly, you’ll take Luke and Paul and drive in right here, meeting up with two volunteers from Coopertown and two from our Pleasant View militia. From Robert’s contribution, you’ll take six of them with you and send them over in this direction, the north side of the main structure.”
Paige likes Paul from the condo community very well. She’s met him a few times. He’s a sweet man, and she knows his story of how John and Reagan helped him and his family at that hospital being chased by psychopaths a few years ago. Now, he and K-Dog have their own village, responsibilities as leaders of it, and a military force they’ve grown.
“John,” Derek says, gaining his brother’s attention, “you and Cory will take four of Robert’s men and two of the volunteers from town and work this angle with the Professor acting as your sniper, spotter, and backup.”
