by Dave Conifer
“Let him decide for himself,” Nick said. “He can stay with us if he wants to.”
By now Nick and Kevin had converged in the front hallway. Kevin leveled his rifle at Nick’s chest. “Mind your own,” he said simply. “Last chance.”
Nick put his hands up defensively, purposely not brandishing his own gun. “Have it your way,” he said, standing aside. Kevin stomped past him toward the back of the house rather than asking for help moving the barrier that blocked the front door. It was probably a better escape route anyway. Curt looked around, clearly dubious about this plan, before helplessly following his father. A minute later they’d opened the sliding glass door and were gone. The rest of them braced themselves for the sounds of an attack, but none came.
“That stinks,” Dwayne said. “Boy should make his own decision.”
“Besides that, the numbers just got a lot worse for us,” Elise said. “We have three shooters and four sides of the house.”
“How about I take front, Nick takes back, and you cover the sides?” Dwayne suggested.
Both Nick and Elise nodded. “And we should probably do it from upstairs.”
They’d reached the landing on the stairway when the air was filled with the rumbling of approaching engines. For the first time, Nick understood the terror the locals associated with that noise, something he’d scoffed about that during his first hours in Lockworth. He ascended the rest of the way and ran to the front window in time to see the raucous convoy. A few guns were fired wildly in the dusk. The men were taking shelter in the beds of the trucks now, as though they finally understood that they were up against a completely different kind of foe in Lockworth now.
There were ten or so trucks, and maybe a bike or two. Most of the men he could see were armed only with crude weapons, just as Elise had suspected. That was good, of course, but the fact still remained that they had only three rifles in that house with them, along with a sledge hammer and a tire iron.
Most of the convoy roared past. Apparently they had some inkling of where the bulk of their prey was hiding after all. Nick would have fretted about how the defenses would hold up down the street if he hadn’t been so worried about their own situation. It got worse when one of the pickups jumped the curb and thundered across the overgrown lawn almost all the way up to the porch.
“Elise!” Nick shouted as he broke through the window with the butt of his rifle. “Up here!” Without waiting, he leaned out and poured rounds all over the unsuspecting occupants of the truck. An instant later there were at least five dead men on the ground, and one still lurking behind the battered pickup. Nick ran to another room, where he had a better angle, and picked the last man off, expending a single round. Another one down, he thought. I have a lot of notches to carve into my gun after today.
“Three of them had guns!” Nick yelled as he ran down the stairs. “I’m gonna’ grab them!” He dashed to the un-barricaded back door before anybody had time to protest. Once outside he ran around to the front of the house, rifle at the ready just in case anybody was still alive.
Nobody was. He crawled around the wreckage, snatching guns and patting the corpses down for ammunition. When he stood to go back inside he had three rifles strapped on, his own in his hands, and satchel full off fresh ammo over his shoulder. But when he was halfway around to the back of the house another truck rumbled onto the lawn, caught Nick in the headlights, and plowed through the grass between the houses at him. He saw yet another truck right behind it. The decimation the first truck had taken had not gone unnoticed after all. Now he wished Dwayne and Elise had come outside with him. They’d be a lot safer if they had. The house had just become a death trap.
Since Dwayne and Elise were still inside, leading two truckloads of these barbarians back into the house was out of the question. Instead, he ran straight into the woods. By the time the men had jumped out of the truck to resume the chase on foot, Nick was out of view in the trees. He would hide, and hope the pursuers followed him rather than enter the house, where Dwayne and Elise would be nearly helpless.
“Nick!” came a whispered voice. “Is that you?”
Nick recognized Dwayne’s voice. It was coming from just a few feet away. “What are you doing here?” he whispered back as he moved toward the voice.
“We saw what happened,” Dwayne said after they found each other. “As soon as they drove across the lawn, we beat it out the back door.”
“Thank God,” Nick said. “You were dead ducks in there.” Of course, there was danger in the woods, too. They had no idea who or what was back there. He could remember a time not so long ago when John had thought the enemy had infiltrated the narrow forest. As they weaved through the darkness, Nick considered dumping the heavy load of weaponry he was carrying, but decided against it. Mostly because he’d risked a lot to get it and didn’t want to hand it all back, but also because there was a good chance they’d be needing all of it in the near future.
They continued feeling their way through until they found a natural defense, several stout trees that were close together. Nick finally dropped his load as he tried to catch his breath. It was too dark to sort through what he’d pilfered, so he satisfied himself with loading a fresh magazine into his own rifle. The others did the same. Their own ammo was dwindling fast. He wondered if anything in the satchel would be of use.
“All we have to do is survive, man,” Dwayne said. “The rest of them can take care of themselves back at the compound.”
Nick grimaced. Although Dwayne hadn’t meant it as a jab, it was yet another way of reminding him that he and Elise had left the relatively safe fortress up the block to protect him, and now they were on the run because of it. He saved his apology for later. Now was not the time.
“I guess we keep running as long as we can,” Nick replied. “And whenever they’re close, we stop moving long enough to shoot back. Right?”
“Yep,” Dwayne said.
“Good for me,” Elise agreed.
The silhouettes of their pursuers could now be seen thrashing through the tree line. Judging by their shouts, Nick realized that there were some highly-motivated, angry men coming after them. Stopping like this to regroup had been a mistake. With their numbers advantage, the attackers would close in quickly. Nick scooped up the rifles again and led the retreat deeper into the woods. The farther he went, the more area the pursuers would have to search. Time and space were their allies.
Running was impossible; it was too dark and there were too many obstacles. That the same was true for the attackers was little consolation. They dodged and twisted through the trees with the ominous sound of the pursuing mob in their ears. Moments later a torrent of gunfire erupted far off in the distance. Nick guessed that the convoy had reached the compound at the end of the block, and had been greeted rudely by a heavy cannonade that had been choreographed by John.
The attackers heard it, too. Nick knew it from their sudden silence. “Let’s blast ‘em,” Dwayne suggested. “While they’re not moving.”
“Okay,” Nick agreed. “We each empty it out in their direction. Then we run again.”
Dwayne fired first, and then Elise. Nick didn’t bother putting any of his load down before getting his own shots off, because accuracy was impossible anyway in the dark woods. He thought it likely that they’d hit a few men whether they took aim or not. That would make them more cautions and slow them down. The cost was that they’d just given their location away. The only solution was to move, which they did immediately.
Nick wished Elise would say something. He was worried about her. She was breathing harder than he and Dwayne, and was repeatedly lagging behind. She’d lived through famine and invasion in Lockworth, and it had taken a toll on her.
The savage cries of the enemy resumed as soon as the shooting stopped. The enemy was madder than ever, Nick thought. He doubted now that they had any guns. If they did, they’d surely be using them. But there was still danger, just by the sheer numbers. They continued to ru
n through what now seemed to be a forest. Nick had completely lost his sense of direction, but thought they were headed toward the compound. The steady rattle of distant gunfire told him that the battle was still raging there.
“We’re losing Elise!” Dwayne gasped between breaths, shaking Nick out of his thoughts. They stopped long enough for her to stumble forward to them. She looked like she was completely spent, done in by months of starvation. Nick didn’t think she could run anymore, by the looks of it.
“Maybe you should hide,” Nick suggested, the rowdy battle cries of the enemy growing louder by the second.
“No way,” Elise said. She could hear them, too. “Just go ahead without me, but I’m not stopping.”
“There’s a break in the trees up ahead,” Nick said, pointing at s patch of forest that was somehow less-dark. “I’ll bet that’s the end of the block where the compound is. We’ll just have to find a way to signal who we are when we approach.”
“Yeah, before John blows our heads off,” Dwayne said.
They scrambled along as quickly as Elise could move. As they closed in, Nick could see he was right that they’d reached the edge of the woods. With the attackers right on their heels, they’d have to make their move quickly once they were out in the open.
When they emerged from the woods, Nick had no idea where they were. In fact, he wasn’t sure if they’d been in the woods for five minutes or five hours. The streets were oddly serene. They were nowhere near the compound. “Where is it?” he yelled at Dwayne, who was the next to pop out.
“I don’t know!” Dwayne answered. He pointed to the left. “Over there, maybe!”
“I’ll find a place to hide!” Nick said. “Wait for Elise and follow me over!” He took off without waiting for an answer. There should have been danger around, but there wasn’t. Except for the maniacal screaming of the men who hadn’t yet come out of the woods, it was quiet.
Thinking they could take shelter among the houses on the other side of the street, Nick darted across. His heart sank when he saw headlights up the block, less than the length of a football field away. Night had set in fully now, and the headlights seemed as bright as the beacons on a prison wall to him. After diving into some shrubs he took another look and decided that they were heading in his direction.
It was difficult to be sure with his tired, grainy eyes, but he thought he saw ten headlights, which equated to five vehicles. He wasn’t sure if he’d been exposed by the headlights or not, but he knew they’d be much closer by the time Dwayne and Elise crossed. Too close, he concluded. When he looked back, however, it was too late to warn them off. They were already in the street.
“Hurry!” Nick yelled. It was just as well that they crossed, even if they were visible to the oncoming vehicles. Staying where they were, by the opening in the trees, would result in violent, bloody death. Nick watched helplessly as they staggered across the road. The headlights lit them up like a spotlight on a stage as Dwayne dragged Elise. Just as they reached the other side of the road the headlights disappeared, leading Nick to wonder if it had all been in his imagination.
When they’d made it to the shrubs, Nick pointed at the house twenty feet away before leaning in to support Elise under her other shoulder. They limped the rest of the way, tripping repeatedly in the high grass, and fell exhausted behind the corner of the house. When Nick looked back, the mob of barbarians was emerging from the woods. Up the street were the dark shapes of the convoy, which was somehow arriving at the same time. The man in front of the frenzied mob pointed directly at the spot where Nick was cowering, almost as if he could see in the dark.
Twenty-seven
“Awfully quiet here, so far,” Con Bailey said to Sarah, who was in the passenger seat of the van. In her lap, as they entered the city limits of Lockworth, was her preferred weapon, the Glock pistol she’d held onto ever since the battle of Crestview. There weren’t many magazines left for it, she knew. Before long she’d have to get used to a new weapon, especially if Carlo held her to her promise and put her on the new sniper team.
The occupants of that van, one of six that had come up from Tabernacle, was a strange mix of old and new. They’d all come together at a rendezvous point just south of Lockworth, including the U-Haul truck. Sarah insisted on riding in the lead van, which was obviously going to be driven by the Bailey Brothers, who knew the way. Since Tom and Matt came with her as a package deal, the three Sec Forces who’d been in that van were quickly reassigned to van number two in the convoy.
“Just wait,” Sarah said. “Carly’s no dummy. If she thought there’d be trouble, there probably will be. Where are we headed?”
“Everybody’s living on Savoy Street,” Con said. “If it stays quiet like this, we can roll in, load everybody up, and be back on the road in an hour or two.”
“Sounds good to me,” Matt said from the back. “But we don’t have enough gas to make it all the way back. You already know that.”
“Just so long as we get out of Lockworth,” Sarah said. “We’ll figure the rest out later.” She wasn’t worried about finding enough fuel to get back to Tabernacle. They’d passed dozens of stranded vehicles along the way, choosing to take care of business in Lockworth instead of stopping to siphon out the contents of their gas tanks. They could take care of that on the way home.
“Hey Dex,” Con called into the back. “What’s the best route? Turn here, right?”
“That’s what I’d do,” Dex Bailey answered. Con had already made the turn before hearing his brother’s reply. They cruised along a residential street, one side lined with houses, the other with woods that Sarah guessed marked the edge off town. The Sec Forces had told them not to use headlights but Con had flipped them on anyway, and the other drivers had quickly followed suit. Sarah didn’t think that was wise, but this was Con’s turf, so she’d held her tongue.
“What was that?” Con yelled suddenly. “Did you see that? Somebody just crossed the road up there!”
“I saw it, too!” Sarah said.
“I think it was a deer,” Dex said. “Wait! What was that?”
“It was two of them that time!” Con said. “And it wasn’t no deer! Everybody get your guns out! It’s party time!”
Con turned off the headlights with a slap at the dashboard. Sarah saw in the side mirror that the other five drivers, happy to take their cues from a Lockworth native in the lead van, did the same, plunging the street back into darkness.
They continued forward at the same deliberate pace, but saw nothing else in the road. Sarah had just about convinced herself that they’d imagined it when a barely-visible parade of figures streamed across the road about thirty feet in front of the van.
“Should I light them up?” Con asked. Without waiting for an answer, he flipped the headlights back on.
“That’s them!” Dex yelled. “I’m sure of it. Open fire!” He yanked the lever on the side door and violently slid it open as his brother stopped the van. He jumped out, took aim at the baffled men in the intersection, and squeezed the trigger. Afraid to step into his line of fire but confident that he knew what he was shooting at, Sarah simply rolled down the window and fired her pistol without leaving her seat.
The other vans quickly pulled alongside Con’s, their passengers leaping out to join the massacre. Seconds later, seeing the bodies which had fallen on top of each other in the road, Con waved them off to end the overkill. There couldn’t be any live targets left, Sarah was sure.
“That was easy,” Tom said to Matt with a grin. “I never even got a shot off.”
Matt turned toward him in time to hear the shots and the near-simultaneous thunk of rounds as they slammed into Tom’s chest, knocking him backwards. Tom looked at Matt with a quizzical expression before dropping his rifle. His body folded itself up as he fell to the roadway. Matt heard a sickening crack as Tom’s head slammed into the asphalt.
“Get down!” Dex yelled, but nobody needed to be told to seek cover behind the vans. More firepo
wer was poured into the dying heap of men in the roadway ahead of them, at least one of whom must have been alive enough to get a few more shots off.
Sarah let the others do the shooting this time. All she could think about was how she’d coaxed Tom and Matt to come along. Now Tom was dead, by the looks of it. How was she going to face Penny and the kids now? Matt looked similarly stunned, and was standing straight up behind the van looking like he had no intention of shooting or protecting himself.
“A few of them made it across before we got close enough!” Con was yelling at Dex. The brothers had apparently seen enough death that a single casualty wasn’t going to slow them down. “They ran between those houses. The shot might have come from there.”
“Do we root them out, or just blast away?” Dex asked. The Bailey Brothers were clearly in charge now. Even the Sec Forces in the other vans had come over for direction.
“No, they could be anywhere by now, Dex,” Con said. “We can’t afford to waste the ammo.”
“Don’t shoot!” came a voice from the darkness among the houses. “We’re coming out!”
“They’re surrendering?” Matt asked.
“I’d rather kill ‘em,” Dex said.
“Stay calm,” Con said. “We might be able to get some information out of ‘em first.” He walked to the front of the van and sheltered behind the open door. “Drop your weapons!” he yelled. “Put your hands behind your head! Walk slow!”
Three people emerged from the darkness. Sarah reached Con just in time to see two bedraggled, filthy men with their hands raised above their heads. A frail woman stood next to them, looking like she was about to collapse. “We’re on your side!” one of the men yelled. Sarah stiffened. She knew that voice. So did Matt. Sarah pushed the barrel of Dex’s rifle down before running to the three figures.
“Nick!” Sarah said as she ran forward and hugged him. This was why she came. “I was so worried.”
“We’re good,” Nick said. “Now, anyway. You’re a sight for sore eyes, Sarah. We thought we were goners. We thought you were with them,” he explained, jerking a thumb at the casualties lying in the street.
