by John Grit
Brian ran and unbolted the door. He gasped when he saw his father and Deni. They were both covered in dried blood.
Ben hung his shotgun on a gun rack, so he could help Nate get Deni to a mattress.
Brian closed and bolted the steel door.
Martha had a kerosene lamp lit in seconds. She looked up after putting the match out and saw Deni. “Oh, God. Cindy, get the first-aid supplies out.”
Brian’s worried eyes went from Deni to his father. He watched Nate take his pack off. He could not tell if Nate hesitated when he moved because of tired muscles or the wounds. “Dad, you’re hurt, too.”
Nate shook his head. "I’m okay. Who’s on watch?”
“Me,” Brian said.
“Then get back on duty.” Before Brian moved, Nate said, “Wait.” He walked across the small room and held his son. “I’m okay.”
“Yeah, you’re always okay. As reliable as a hammer.” Brian grabbed his shotgun. “I guess Sam is gone.”
Everyone stopped whatever they were doing. Even Caroline and Carrie, who had woken to stand sleepy-eyed, were hit by the news.
Nate’s jaw clenched. “Dead. They caught us tearing down the bridge and started shooting right off. I yelled for him to back the Cat away, but he kept working on the bridge.”
“I think he was a good friend,” Brian said. He glanced at Deni lying on the mattress. “We’ve had it easy while you two did all the fighting.”
Nate’s face changed and he raised his chin. A light that was not there before shined. He suddenly was not as tired. “We could not stop them completely. They will be coming.”
Caroline and Carrie stood out of the way with colorless faces, not saying anything, just listening.
Martha said, “We will deal with what comes when it gets here. What about her head? Have you done everything that can be done?”
“Yes, no need to bother it for now. I stitched it up after cleaning it. She has a superficial wound on her arm that needs cleaning though. You might want to check her over for more wounds.”
Cindy pulled on a blanket hanging from a rod until Deni and Martha had privacy. “We’ll clean her up and check her.” She disappeared behind the blanket.
Ben grabbed a pail and pumped water from the hand pump on the floor.
Brian glanced from the loophole to his father. “You need to sit down and take your shirt off so someone can look at your wounds, too.”
Nate gave him a tired smile. “Have you taken to ordering your dad around?”
Brian’s eyes went back to looking at the black night. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Just kidding.” Nate pulled his bloody shirt off.
Brian spoke without taking his eyes off what little he could see outside. “What about it. Does she have a chance? A head wound is bad.” He smeared his face.
“I like her, too, Brian.” Nate knew the others were listening. “The bullet glanced off her hard skull and ripped some flesh loose. Infection and brain damage from swelling is the main danger. We won’t know whether she’ll still be Deni or not until she comes to—if she comes to. I think she has a good chance from what I saw of the wound. She’s been out a long time now, though.”
“We’ll take care of her,” Brian said, “as long as she’s still alive.”
Ben asked Nate, “I’ll bet she impressed you some out there, didn’t she?”
“And then some,” Nate answered, without taking his eyes off Brian. “I never fought with any better. Her showing up at the farm was one of the best things that happened since the world went to hell. Brian and I’ve been lucky to have the caliber of friends we’ve met lately.”
Caroline said, “If you want, you can go outside and clean up. I’ll pump water and hand a bucket out the door for you. There’s soap and a rag and towel outside, too, just to the left of the door.”
Nate stood. “I’m dead tired, but I’ll sleep better clean than filthy.” He noticed she seemed to have come out of her shell since he last saw her.
“And you need those wounds cleaned, too,” Brian added.
“That’s true.” Nate nearly fell over when he bent down to untie his boots.
Carrie spoke up, surprising everyone. “I’ll fix something for you to eat while you’re outside.”
When Nate came back in, his hair still wet, he was shirtless and in extra jeans, he had in his pack.
Martha was waiting for him. She had a lamp on a table covered with medical supplies and a chair nearby. “Sit here,” she said.
Martha had to sew Nate’s wounds, using three dozen stitches, a dozen on one wound alone.
“We’re going to run out and be reduced to sewing thread or fishing line if this keeps up,” Ben said.
Martha gave her husband a sharp look. “If this keeps up, we’re going to run out of friends. You’re looking at a living miracle.”
Nate’s eyes flashed to Brian. “I’m here, and I’m not hurt bad.”
“You’re going back, aren’t you?” Brian’s voice echoed in the concrete bunker.
Nate looked down at nothing. “I’m going to eat and rest for a few hours.”
“Then you’re leaving.” Brian faced his father squarely. “Even though a few hours from now, you will still be so tired you can barely move. And this time you will be fighting them alone. I remember how you said a two-man team is ten times more likely to survive a gunfight than one man. You barely made it back. Now you’re going alone.”
“Like I said, I am going to eat and then take a nap.” Nate checked to see if a bandage would stay in place. He looked at Martha. “Put some duct tape on that. I don’t want it falling off.”
“At least take Ben with you if you won’t let me go.” Brian showed no sign of crying. His voice did not crack.
“If it’s woods fighting, my shotgun will work fine,” Ben said.
Nate kept his eyes on Brian. “No. You have a family to take care of. Brian is a man now. He can make it without me if it comes to that. But I swear I intend to be back here soon.”
Brian inhaled through his nose, his lips drawn tight. His chest rose and then fell as he stared at his father. “Nothing I can do about it. You’re bigger than me.” He turned and looked out the loophole.
No one said anything while Nate had his first real food since he left the farm days ago.
Ben found him a T-shirt to wear. It was white.
Nate threw it back at him. “I need something green or at least dark.”
Brian jerked his head around. He said nothing, but his eyes told Nate he knew.
Nate stood when Ben brought him a T-shirt a size too small, but it was dark green. “Brian, I need you to go to the cave and get an IV kit for Deni.” He slid the shirt on. “Take Martha with you so she can get other things Deni will need. Might as well fill a pack with food and ammo while you’re there.”
As soon as Brian and Martha left, Nate put on clean socks and his wet, dirty boots. He stuffed food and rifle ammunition in his pack and filled his canteens. Ben handed him an olive drab military surplus jacket. Nate hung his compass from his neck and then put on the jacket and his boonie hat.
“Tell Brian I promise I’ll be back in a few days.” Nate picked his rifle off the gun rack and unbolted the door.
Cindy, who was keeping watch, her carbine in hand, said, “I can’t see much but I don’t think anyone’s out there.”
Ben waited until Nate was in the doorway. “You keep that promise.”
Chapter 12
Nate rushed to the canoe as fast as darkness would allow. He paddled with a rage. A renewed force within drove him on, despite his fatigue.
Before false dawn, he was twenty miles downriver.
The morning was three hours old when Nate found the chainsaw and gas can he had hidden so many days ago. There was no one around, since they were hunting Deni and him on the other side of the river. He left the saw and headed for the bridge with just enough gas to do what he needed.
Deep in the swamp, not far from the river,
Nate found a hiding place to rest. They would have to step on him by accident to see him where he slept.
Something yanked Nate out of his slumber. Voices. He held his rifle across his chest and listened.
At first, he could not understand their words, but they came closer and he could hear the conversation.
Nate heard what sounded like a teenage boy. “I think we should turn back. If they catch us—”
“It’s too late for that,” a man sounding much older said. “You know what happened to Shaun Twillager when they caught him away from his post. Never liked the bastard. Seemed to be kind of a pansy. But it wasn’t pretty watching him die.” He hawked up something out of his throat. “God damn smokes. Wish I had one right now, though.”
“It ain’t cigarettes I miss,” the teen said.
“This is a hard bunch, boy. Too hard for me. And I know you ain’t got the stomach for their ways. I saw you throwing up when we raided that last town. I ain’t never even took nothing that wasn’t mine in my life before the shit hit the fan. But I got to eat. Taking what you gotta have to survive is one thing, but they go way too far. No. We got to get the hell away from that bunch before it’s too late.”
“I figured if I didn’t join them, they would kill me,” the teen said.
“You figured right. There’s some truth to the saying about safety in numbers, but that bunch is too rough for me. And I always thought I was a rough old cob.” They were close enough now Nate could hear the man spit. “Boy, that murdering bunch of animals could make Hitler’s SS puke.”
They walked by no more than fifteen yards from Nate. He let them go.
Nate slept until sundown. Then he ate a quick meal of powdered soup reconstituted with cold water. By the time it was good and dark, he had already made his first kill. The old KA-BAR was bloody when he slid it back in its sheath.
There was another sentinel to take out before Nate could burn the truck. Of all the trucks parked in the road, it had the heaviest load on it. Nate hoped whatever was stacked so high under that tarpaulin would explode.
Before Nate could work his way closer, the last sentinel grabbed his belt buckle and trotted into the woods. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Nate ran to the rear of the truck, pulled the tarpaulin aside, and splashed gas on the crates. He didn’t have time to read the labels, but they reminded him of military crates he had seen years ago.
Nate lit a safety match and tossed it. There was no need to look when the fire caught with a small explosion of its own, he just ran faster.
A powerful shock wave slammed Nate face-first into the mud. Searing heat burned his skin. He lay there until the heat receded some before pushing up from the mud and running to the river.
It took Nate ten minutes to find a place to hide his pack and rifle. He needed to be able to find them when he returned. A mossy windfall jutting out from the other side of the river was good enough. He could see that while swimming downstream.
Even without his pack and rifle, he was weighed down with a heavy revolver and pockets full of ammunition for it. Swimming in the tea-colored warm water, he approached the bridge. Shouting echoed from down the road, feet drummed the wood planks above him.
Slime growing on the braces attached to a bridge piling made for tenuous footing, but Nate managed to climb up and slide under a railing. He lay there, searching for danger and getting his bearings.
A sliver of moon came out from behind clouds. Nate slid along a timber the bridge’s designer must have intended to be a curb of sorts. It provided him with a narrow ribbon of shade that he used to hide in as best he could.
All of the vehicles Nate shot up had been pushed off the bridge and dropped into the river. They had no way to repair the shot-up radiators and few spare tires, so the trucks were useless to them. There were more pickups parked in the dirt road, but not on the bridge. Nate hoped to see another large truck loaded with something under a tarpaulin, but there were only empty pickups for transporting men.
Racing against time, Nate ran to the first pickup and looked in. There was no key in the ignition. He ran to the second truck, looked in, snatched the door open, and slid behind the wheel. The starter groaned and the engine sputtered, then caught. In seconds, he was racing for the repair, hoping it was not strong enough yet to hold the pickup’s weight. He slowed to three miles an hour just before reaching the flimsy patch in the bridge, and jumped out, rolling to the edge and under the railing.
Shouts and gunshots reached Nate’s ears just as he slid feet-first off the bridge, holding on just long enough to swing his body out to miss a heavy beam below. When he came up, the current had carried him against one of the pickups. It was lying on its side, and something on its undercarriage snagged his shirt. He pulled loose, losing several inches of skin a quarter-inch wide. He saw another pickup’s back bumper poking out of the water nearer to shore, the front end disappearing into a deep hole. It was a convenient place to hide while he took his bearings.
Splintered logs floating downriver gave him an idea. He swam under water and came up in the flotsam, keeping his head just high enough to breathe through his nose.
Shouts and blind shooting sounded like music to his ears. He was still in danger. They would be hunting him hard all night, and he still had to get his rifle and pack before evading them. But he had just bought several more days of time. How could he not feel better than he had since Deni was shot? The bastards. He was past resisting the urge to hate them.
His smug smile faded. What next?
Since it’s obvious, I’m trying to stop them from crossing the river and advancing down the road, they will expect me to be on that side of the river. It’s where Deni and I have done most of the fighting.
Nate crawled out of the river, dripping more than water: his old wounds were bleeding again. He knew that scratch he suffered from the truck in the water was actually a deep gash. Thinning rivulets of blood ran down his stomach. Taking his pack and rifle, he moved on. His plans included attacking them from the far rear of their caravan of cutthroats.
Morning came and Nate moved closer to his target. Peering through brush, he could see the road and the last of their vehicles parked across it to form a roadblock. They had their rear position well guarded. Yep, they’re expecting trouble from behind. Who? What force could take them on toe-to-toe? There is no sheriff department, no state police. Vigilantes seeking revenge? How could civilians possibly gather up enough men for that? I doubt if there are more than a few thousand men left alive in this part of the county.
A sudden flurry of shots forced him to leave those questions unanswered.
A woman screamed. A child cried. Nate maneuvered so he could see to shoot.
Hate hardened Nate’s face as he watched two men fire rounds into the driver of a pickup before he could get it turned around in the road. A man and his wife and daughter had driven around a curve and into the killers’ trap.
Several men dragged the man’s bloody body out of a diesel-powered Dodge, its windshield shattered. They dropped him in the dirt. One man shot him in the head, though it appeared he was already gone. Then they dragged the screaming woman out and dropped her in the road. Her little girl, she was about three years old, ran up, and bit one of the men on his hand when he yanked the woman up by her hair. He took the girl by her upper right arm and flung her against a pine tree. She laid unconscious in a ditch.
Nate feared she would drown, as the ditch was half-full of water. He started firing immediately. The man who threw the little girl was the first to die. In a hurry to help her, Nate fired until his rifle clicked on an empty chamber. Normally, he would have repositioned after two or three shots, but he wanted to kill them as fast as possible.
While Nate ducked behind a tree to reload, the mother tried to run for the girl. One of the men shot her in the back. She fell on her daughter. Nate ran across the road, firing. The little girl would certainly drown with her dead mother holding her under water.
A bullet spun Nate aro
und and he dropped his rifle. He reached for his revolver and aimed with one hand. A man fell. Nate shot him again. Dirt flew behind the man’s torso when the big bullet went through.
Struggling to rise, Nate looked up and saw another man, fifty yards away, running down the road toward him, rifle in both hands, swinging wildly. The man stopped and raised his rifle to shoot. Nate lay on his stomach, aimed, and squeezed the trigger. The man was dead before he hit the ground.
After pulling the mother off her, Nate found the girl’s head was not under water after all. He pushed on her chest. She was not breathing. He continued to push down on her chest until he was afraid he would break ribs. She would not breathe.
Nate checked the mother. She was dead.
Rage made Nate’s hands shake as he reloaded the revolver. He walked back to his rifle and picked it up. His right arm seemed weak and would not do what he wanted without extreme effort to will it to move.
A sound from behind caught his attention. He swung around, ready to shoot. The girl was coughing. Her chest racked. Nate ran to her and turned her on her side. “Breathe, little girl.” He picked her up and laid her on the pickup’s seat. He noticed her eyes were half closed and without life.
Motion down the road alerted him to danger. A wounded man tried to crawl to his rifle. Nate walked to him.
The man looked up, his face defiant, hard. “What are you crying about, asshole? I’m the one that’s dying.” He coughed up blood.
“Yes, you are,” Nate said. He raised his revolver. No need to waste a rifle bullet.
The man stared at Nate. “What’s that little girl to you?”
Nate shot him in the head. “A little girl,” he said to no one. He used the revolver to shoot up the radiators of every vehicle but the pickup the girl was in.
When he walked back to the truck, the little girl was crying and trying to sit up. “I want my mommy.”
A bullet slammed into the headrest above her. She cried louder.
Nate got the truck in reverse and its back tires spinning. Dirt billowed out of the rear fenders as he backed around the curve at forty miles an hour. He continued down the road in reverse, the diesel engine screaming, for another mile. Then he backed into a jeep trail until the truck was stuck in mud.
