911: The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

  Leaving the Vineyard behind them, they slipped through a cow pasture and into an area on the edge of the suburbs where the countryside ran thick with roads. He tried to skirt them while still heading more or less north, but it grew tougher as they left the foothills. They slowed down, daring to eat a little something and quench their thirst.

  Sara wouldn’t meet his eyes or say a word as they parceled out food and water, and he didn’t push her, not knowing where her emotional state was. For once, Ava kept any smart-ass comments she might have to herself. After ten minutes, they finished their break and started moving again.

  Half an hour later, they reached an elevated spot overlooking Highway 31 and Parker saw the mileage sign indicating Indianapolis was twenty-five miles away and realized they were east of Carmel, a suburb north of Indianapolis, surprising him at how far they’d traveled.

  “Look,” Ava said pointing down the highway.

  A mile back, Parker could see a large unit of soldiers moving north; six Humvees, a dozen canvas-topped two-ton trucks carrying troops, and SUVs and pickups rolling to the front and rear of the convoy. He guessed it was a company-sized element, more than one hundred men. Below them, a small caravan of two black SUVs and a single Humvee rolled down the highway, taking up both lanes and passing directly beneath where they were hiding. Parker scoped the far side of the road. He saw a squad-sized element patrolling a stretch of neighborhood street—in no hurry, but ambling in their direction.

  “Christ,” Sara said. “I didn’t realize it was this bad out here. No wonder they didn’t want to leave the Vineyard.”

  “They might think they’re free and clear but ultimately, they swapped what freedom they had for a cage,” Parker said watching the vehicles roll by. “We’re going north; if they set up a screening sweep….” He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t have to.

  “We’ll have to cross the highway,” Sara said. “If we want to reach where Mom told us about, we have to cross. God,” she said. “If it’s this bad out here, can you imagine what’s happening closer in toward the cities?”

  “I know,” he said. “It’s thirty-six miles to Kokomo, a straight shot up the 31. But we’re encircled on all sides; they’re driving us, though they don’t know it yet,” he said. Then, “I don’t think,” he added. “But we’ve got to come in from the rural areas if we want to reach the pick-up spot.” He shrugged, helpless. “We don’t give up; we don’t quit.”

  “Then we might as well cross the highway here,” Ava pointed out.

  Parker nodded. Every time they’d opened fire, they’d given the authorities a position to triangulate. Despite that, they couldn’t stop moving. He sighed. There was nothing to do for it. He began edging down the side of the hill toward the highway, sticking close to the brush and moving slow.

  At the edge of the road, he paused in the high grass and scanned the area. There was a stretch of wooded greenbelt in front of them, running down the middle of the highway. Slowly, Parker raised his head and scanned the area.

  He froze.

  Right on the side of the road sat a military green canvas bag. Immediately, Parker looked up. They were right there, a Small Kill Team with the first soldier less than thirty feet away. He broke out in a cold sweat. How many of these teams could be strung out around the area? Three or four men, lying in hiding near obvious routes, waiting for refugees fleeing the larger towns and cities.

  The soldiers moved a little and they emerged from the background, his vision able to discern them in their ghillie suits like autostereogram posters coming into focus. Parker shuddered. It had been the purest form of animal instinct that had warned him. The greenbelt was on a slight rise giving anyone watching a decent view of both sides of the highway. As a result, their position now left them exposed to Parker.

  Eyes darting, he counted three, settled in about twenty-five yards apart. Two of them held scoped and modified M14 designated defensive marksman weapons, the M21 Sniper Weapon System. They fired 7.62 mm NATO cartridges, the same as the M60 machine gun. The third manned a M249 light machine gun.

  He realized neither Ava nor Sara had seen the men. Moving his head slowly, he looked back over his shoulder; they had frozen when he had, as if they’d developed a pack-mind with his.

  The three men ahead of them sat quietly. Parker slowly raised his hand and pointed at his eyes before holding up three fingers. Ava and Sara nodded; they saw them, too. Sara stiffened, then barely shook her head from side to side in a “no” motion. She looked petrified. Parker gave her a quizzical look.

  What? he mouthed.

  She opened her eyes wide, darting them from side to side, and then she thrust out the tip of her tongue. She was terrified, and he couldn’t understand her. Finally, he realized she was pointing. Ever so slowly, he turned his head. He squinted, and realized the bushes down from them, on the same side of the road they were on, were full of men. It was another SKT. Between the two groups, they had set up a slightly modified “L” shaped ambush. Only, the three fugitives had emerged right in the gap between the joining ends of the long and shorter arms.

  Parker’s mouth ran dry and the hair along his forearms and the back of his neck stood on end, his body flushed as adrenaline soaked him. His body nearly vibrated with suppressed energy. They’d been lucky that none of the soldiers saw them come down the hill but there was no way that luck would stay with them if they tried to backtrack.

  We’re dead, Parker realized. I should give up, maybe save Sara and Ava’s lives. He knew the thought was ridiculous even before it finished. He remembered the U.S. Marshal putting the Chevy 350 into gear and peeling out, leaving the three prisoners to hang by the neck from the lamppost.

  He unclipped the fragmentation grenade they’d stolen from the dead soldiers at the hasty ambush after the cabin, sure the soldiers would see the movement. He showed it to Sara and Ava, then pointed across the road. Ava took out her grenade, as well. Any moment, he expected a barrage of high-velocity rounds to rip into his body. Parker set the first grenade beside him and then pulled out a second. He held little hope of actually being alive long enough to throw the second grenade.

  He eased his breath out through clenched teeth and pulled the pin. The sound seemed as loud as a tire jack clattering on a garage floor; he was sure every single soldier heard it. He closed his eyes, breathing in, and then he slowly released the pent-up breath.

  Swinging his arm up, he heaved the grenade over the tall grass where they were hiding and across the road before dropping himself back down and grabbing the M4. Ava came up to one knee still hidden by the tall grass and lobbed hers even as Sara, eyes bulging, opened up with her own weapon. Parker’s throw was bad, and the grenade rolled into the ditch on the other side of the greenbelt and exploded harmlessly.

  He pivoted to reach for the second grenade as a bullet slammed into his back. He bucked under the impact and saw blood spurt as Ava took a round. Flat on his back, he pulled the pin on the second grenade and heaved it over his head without looking. He heard the metal sphere rattle as it struck pavement, but then went deaf as guns opened up around him.

  The concussive force of a grenade, either his or Ava’s, rattled his teeth in his head and he looked around. He saw a man’s leg come floating down out of the air. The third grenade went off, and rocks, dirt, and shrapnel sprayed everywhere. One of the soldiers along the same side of the highway they were had stood up and the blast had detonated his body, ripping it apart before Parker’s bleary eyes; even so, a great deal of the blast force still slammed into him.

  He blacked out for a moment and, when he opened his eyes, he’d rolled to his belly and begun firing toward the knot of men on the same side of the road as them. He was deaf, using the kickback of recoil to tell him he was firing. He had a concussion, he realized; his brain felt like it was wrapped in gauze. He couldn’t see out of his left eye for some reason, either, and assumed it was too full of blood. His entire face was numb, so he couldn’t pinpoint the problem.

&n
bsp; He killed a soldier and then the Kill Team was on them. The three of them were still prone, trying to fire almost straight up as the soldiers charged.

  A soldier, a teenager, came charging up first, but he was confused and was looking too high to see them. Parker shot him in the face as he was about to step on him, but as the boy fell away another figure in BDUs appeared right behind him.

  Parker put two three-round bursts into him and part of the man’s arm came off as he tumbled away. Parker rolled onto his side, saw a man beating at Ava with the butt of his rifle, and killed him. He sensed movement again, and rolled back the way he’d been pointing originally. It felt like the M4 was too awkward now and he let it go, drawing the stolen Beretta instead. They were killing each other at hand-to-hand distance and a pistol was better than the shortened carbine.

  He leveled the M9, but then saw it was Sara flopping into the dirt next to him. She shouted at him, but all he could see was her face twisting with the effort of screaming. She clawed at him with a hand covered in blood and he dimly realized she wanted him to roll back into the ditch. Groggy, he did as she wanted, snagging the M4 with his free hand. The stimulus of what he’d seen finally reached his brain in a meaningful way and he realized Sara’s little finger had been shot or torn off.

  Lying on his back, pistol up, Parker snapped the muzzle of his gun back and forth, trying to cover every vector at once. He worked his jaw and his ears popped with a rush, and he could hear again. He heard the pop-pop-pop of a carbine and turned toward the sound in time to see Ava finish shooting a wounded soldier in the head. She was painted red with blood; he wasn’t sure how much was hers and how much was someone else’s.

  “They’re dead?” he asked.

  He finally understood what the term gobsmacked really meant. He was utterly and completely gobsmacked to be alive. He tried to get up, but Sara pushed him down.

  “Easy,” she said. She looked at his face. “Oh, Jesus,” she said. It was really more of a gasp.

  “Your hand,” he got out. “We have to wrap it.”

  “My hand is not what you need to be worried about,” she told him.

  Remembering the impact that had struck his back, he felt himself. Looking around, he saw the contents of his pack scattered everywhere. The bullet that had hit him had ripped it open before striking his body. He looked under his left arm and saw where shrapnel had peppered him but he couldn’t deal with it now.

  Ava stumbled over and dropped heavily to her knees beside them. “I killed a lot of people,” she said. Parker saw her slipping into shock right before his eyes. A bullet had entered at the back of her neck and to the side on a downward angle and exited through the front of her left shoulder. Something Parker’s EMT instructor had called a dorsal wound.

  “We have to move,” he said. Able to hear, he realized he was in shock, as well. “Why did I have to pick now to quit drinking?” he asked no one.

  Above them, the skies opened up and rain poured down. He turned his face up toward the rain to let it wash him, and he suddenly had feeling in his face again. He groaned out loud in a strangled cry as fire exploded in his left eye socket.

  “Help me,” he said. “There’s something in my eye.” He raised his hand to feel gently around his face and try to estimate the extent of the wound.

  Ava grabbed his wrist and stopped him. He looked at her, confused.

  “Jim,” she said, her voice soft and dull. “There’s nothing in your eye.”

  “Hurts,” he said, confused. “Bad.”

  Ava nodded. “That’s because you don’t have an eye anymore. You have to let me pack that for you.”

  “I don’t have an eye?” his voice sounded plaintive in his own ears.

  He looked at Sara and saw her holding the hand with the missing finger up, trembling. He looked at Ava. The small-framed blonde looked like Sissy Spacek in the original movie poster for Carrie.

  We’re so fucked, he thought.

  “Jim,” Ava said. “Jim, look at me.”

  He looked at her with his one good eye. It sounded weird hearing his first name coming out of her mouth. “What?” he asked.

  “You have to stay with me,” she said. “You have to tell me what to do. We’ve got to wrap you up; we’ve got to wrap Sara up. We have to stop my bleeding.” She panted, as if the effort of her speech was on par with running a race.

  Sara needs help, Parker thought.

  It was enough to get him moving again. He nodded slowly. “Open the bag over there—it’ll have a field medic kit,” he said. When Ava did so, he asked her, “Is my eye still attached? Is it hanging by the optic nerve?”

  She shook her head. “There’s some mushy material around, but mostly it’s pink skin and blood in the socket.”

  Parker nodded, but the motion sent lightning bolts through his skull. Do the first thing. When that’s done, do the next thing. Then the thing after that. He was coming out of his confusion as much as the concussion would let him.

  “That’s good,” he said, without irony. “Take those four-by-four gauze pads and wet them with the sterile water from the kit. You’re making a wet-to-dry bandage, so soak them good.”

  Moving in robotic motions, Ava did as she was told. Parker moaned and then gasped as she placed the wadded bandages into place. He wasn’t going to pass out. Pain was a really good stimulant.

  “Now put dry four-by-fours around and over the wet ones already in place,” he instructed her.

  He looked at Sara. She held her mangled hand up, but the other one was on the pistol grip of her M4 as she watched the pile of soldier bodies lying close by. She was missing a finger and she was the least wounded of them.

  “Okay,” Ava said. “Done with that.”

  “Good, good job,” Parker said. “Now wind the gauze wrap there around the wound; give me plenty of it.”

  Once it was in place, he used the pain to goad him into further action. They should have already been up and moving, fleeing the scene, but he was betting none of the members of either team had gotten off a radio transmission. Plus, they had to bind their wounds or they wouldn’t get two hundred yards.

  “Ava,” he said, “I’m going to wrap Sara’s hand up. You have to get out from your body armor so I can clean and dress your wound. You’re bleeding the worst of any of us.”

  She didn’t argue. Now that Parker had centered himself, she seemed to be fighting against her own mind slipping away into a perpetual cloud of pain and confusion.

  Working quickly, he wrapped Sara’s hand, realizing that he wouldn’t be able to do much for her here. She’d have to wait until they reached a safer location. Turning back to Ava, he noted that she’d started removing her body armor, but seemed to have stalled.

  “Sara, help me,” he said. They both rose up to their knees and, working together, managed to finish removing the body armor. He next cut a large rend in Ava’s shirt after looking to see if she was bleeding anywhere else.

  Technically, he should have gotten her trauma naked so as not to miss any possible wounds. With the grenade explosions and all the frenzied shooting, every one of them should have been treated in such a fashion, but that wasn’t going to happen at the moment.

  He poured hydrogen peroxide from a little bottle in the kit over her wound and watched it foam up. She didn’t shudder at the liquid spilling over the nasty-looking avulsion, and patted the wound dry with the cravat included in the kit before applying antibiotic ointment. His hands felt stiff and numb, making his gestures clumsy, so he forced himself to slow down and focus.

  “Sara, get my second med kit, please.”

  She rummaged through the mess of gear that had spilled out of his rucksack and found the converted shaving pouch he’d used to build the medic kit. She held it up to show him and he nodded.

  “Good, now hand me the tape inside of it. The masking tape.”

  Working quickly, he ripped two four-inch pieces free. Folding one edge down on each of the longer sides, he applied the tape on eithe
r side of the widest part of Ava’s wound and then used a needle and thread to sew them together. After that, he taped a pressure dressing over as much of the mess as he could, and finally they helped her back into her shirt.

  “We’ve got to get moving,” he said knowing they didn’t have much time before other soldiers would show up.

  Both Sara and Ava just looked at him, but after a moment, all three of them got up and crossed the road. Parker counted eight bodies as they looted the dead. Sudden, overwhelming violence and liberal use of firepower had carried the day for him in every encounter so far, but it wouldn’t carry him all the way home, he knew. The moment they didn’t have surprise on their side, they were finished.

  There was something else, too—an element he’d been using instinctively up until now that he had to get an adequate hold on and apply more consistently. Surprise was important, vital. But in two of the encounters they’d had, the use of smoke had saved his life. Misdirection, he thought. Sow confusion; use tactical deception.

  “Take any BDU top that’s less bloody than the one you have on,” he said. “Check those ghillie suits and see if any of them are intact; if they are, take those, too.”

  “How much farther do you think we can walk in our condition?” Sara asked. The bandage on her hand had already bled through in two spots.

  “We should be dead,” Ava said.

  Parker didn’t argue with her. There was no point in denying the truth of the statement. “But we’re not,” he told her. “So long as we don’t give up, we don’t have to be, understand?”

  She met his gaze, winced slightly at the sight of his ruined face, and then nodded.

  “Good,” he said. “Let’s see what we can save and then let’s get as far from the roads as possible.”

  29

  They skirted the parking lot of a Best Buy where a civilian work detail seemed to be moving pallets of dry goods from one side of the building to another, making no apparent sense to Parker. The workers were only lightly guarded by a four-man squad armed with carbines, but they didn’t engage them.