by R. J. Spears
Soto sensed some sort of tide ebbing out, and he felt his tension level decrease but not enough to make any decision about staying or going. So, sit on the fence he did.
Kilgore slowly turned his head in Soto’s direction, and he said in a loud voice, “Private Soto, we need to find a new vehicle. Do you think you could do that?”
Soto was shocked that Kilgore knew he was still there and hadn’t headed for the hills, but again, it didn’t really surprise him. Few things did, but what really surprised him was why he didn’t run. He had his chance right then and there, but he began to think that he might not have a choice. That there were forces at work compelling him to stay. Against all his better judgment. Even against his will.
He considered Miller and Beltran. They hadn’t made a break for it. There were times he thought that Beltran might just shoot the Colonel. But he hadn’t. None of them had. And none of them had run.
A sinking feeling seeped into Soto’s mind, body, and soul, making him think that he had very little control over his own actions, as if some unknown entity was pulling his strings, and he had almost no choice. Sure, he had run from the Colonel when he had flipped out, but that had been self-preservation. This was something different, as if something had imposed itself onto his soul, making him stay. He knew he didn’t like it, but still he surrendered to it, knowing he had little choice in the decision.
It was in that moment that Soto considered if he was truly damned -- that his soul was lost and he was lost.
“Private Soto?” Kilgore asked again with a slight sense of insistence in his tone. It wasn’t a command, but it wasn’t an innocent question.
It took Soto a few seconds to find his voice as he felt a deep sense of inner sadness threaten to overwhelm him. For some reason, he felt as if he might burst into tears, but he fought it down and said, “Yes, sir. I’m on it.”
“Now, that’s a good soldier,” Kilgore said and continued to stroke the Harley-thing’s head.
Chapter 45
FUBAR
“Madison, did you hear that?” Russell said as he sat up, swearing he had just heard a gunshot in the distance. The delicate equilibrium inside his head teetered back and forth for a moment but finally settled down. He was no longer seeing two of everything. At least, most of the time.
“Yes,” Madison said. She immediately went for her pistol, the gunshots still echoing in the air.
“Hold up there,” Russell said. “You don’t need to be going anywhere.”
“What are you going to do?” Madison asked as he eased his legs off the back of the truck to an unsteady standing position.
“I don’t know, but that shooting isn’t a good thing” he said.
“Want to say anything else, Mr. Obvious?” She asked while she moved in beside him. Both of them wore concerned expressions as they peered in the darkness and listened.
“This was supposed to be covert,” he replied.
“Well, it looks like it didn’t turn out that way.”
“What’s caused you to become so negative?” he asked.
She just looked at him with her head tilted a little and one eyebrow raised up, and he let it drop.
The sounds of several gunshots filtered there way on the moist, night air.
“Can we call them on the walkie-talkie?” she asked.
“They wanted radio silence.”
“Don’t you think things have changed? I mean, that was a gunshot.”
“You do have a point,” he said. “Get me the walkie, would you?”
She retrieved the walkie-talkie and handed it to Russell, who was now leaning against the back of the truck. He turned on the walkie-talkie and depressed the talk key. “Del, come in. This is Russell.” He let that hang there for a moment and pressed the talk key again. “Come in, guys. We’re heard gunshots. Do you need back-up?”
Again, he stopped to listen. After about twenty seconds, Del’s voice came over the walkie-talkie. “Things are FUBAR here. Jones tried a solo approach, and now, he’s making a run for it. It doesn’t look good.”
“Do you need us to come to you?” Russell asked.
“I don’t know,” Del responded. “We may all be making a run for it. Plus, your head is still wonky, and Madison is a thirteen-year-old girl.”
“Let us come and help you,” Russell asked.
“Negatory,” Del replied. “You need to stay put. We may bug out of here, and we need to do it in a hurry. Don’t do anything. Gotta go.”
Madison leaned in closer and said, “They need us. We should go to them.”
The memory of what Del had said echoed in his mind. How could a man with a concussion and a thirteen-year-old help in a shootout?
Maybe Del was right, Russell thought. Madison could possibly help, but he was about as useful as a child plastic shovel in an avalanche. What could he do? Not much, but then he reconsidered the alternatives. With no one else around, why couldn’t he do something? Anything?
Russell thought, we’re better than nothing. But he didn’t want to draw Madison into something dangerous. Despite that fact that she had shot two soldiers in the back and helped turned the tide in a dangerous standoff, she was still just a kid. At least, in his mind, she was.
She seemed more than ready to go. With the news from Del, she was primed to help, but despite her experience, he felt that she really had no idea what she was in for.
The sound of another shot carried back to them on the crisp night air, and that was all he needed.
“Grab your rifle and some ammo,” he said as he pivoted back to the truck to reach into the bed for his rifle. The move knocked off his already tenuous equilibrium, and he had to shoot out a hand to grasp the side of the truck or else he might have fallen over. Madison didn’t notice as she filled a small backpack with extra ammo.
Russell’s head cleared, but he started to wonder what kind of help he could really be if he couldn’t swivel around on his own two feet. How could he expect to aim a gun? What if he shot one of his own?
He knew these thoughts were just rationalizations to keep him at a safe distance. That had always been his default position. Sure, he had stepped out of it a few times, but it was his nature to be conservative and cautious. His dead brother’s voice floated at the back of his memory, “Play it safe, Russell. Just keep your head down and mind your own business.”
That would be so easy, he thought, but these people weren’t strangers. These people were his family now. He couldn’t stay on the sidelines if they needed him.
He leaned into the truck bed and rummaged around for a few seconds, grabbing extra rounds, then his eyes fell on a small duffle bag. The bag contained three of the grenades that Del had brought back. You don’t really need to aim with those, he thought as he snatched up the bag.
“Let’s go,” he said as he turned around. This time, he didn’t feel any of the dizziness that he had experienced before. Madison took the lead, and he followed as they moved into the darkness and towards the sound of the gunfire.
Jo’s insides tightened up as if someone had run a high-tension cable from her hips to shoulders as she watched Jones running at full speed across the field. By now, he was taking evasive action, juking to the left then hard to the right, hoping to avoid the aim of any soldiers inside. The spotlight that had lost him just a moment ago, when he had turned and started sprinting for the trees, it slashed across the field in pursuit, looking like a giant, angry, and blazing white eye. He was fast, but it was faster.
Bullets hit the soft ground around Jones, ripping up chunks of soil. The chunks snapped up in the air like popcorn. He course corrected with each impact, but they got closer with each shot.
Jo thought it was a minor miracle that Jones hadn’t been hit yet, but he had gotten smart and switched to a zigzag pattern. The big problem with this new tactic was that it dramatically slowed him down.
“What should we do?” Del asked in a half whisper.
Good question, Jo thought. If they fired back o
n the attackers, there was no more hiding. They’d be in a war that there was little doubt they would lose. And that meant they wouldn’t be able to take out the helicopters. That meant their people would still be at their mercy. If they didn’t do anything, Jones was likely a dead man running.
It was a classic dilemma of the needs of the many versus the needs of the few. Or the one, in this case.
Jones danced in and out of the light as bullets tore up the soil around him, each shot seeming to be closer and closer to hitting him. To his credit, he hadn’t run back toward where Jo and Del were camped out but had cut north. She could only guess that he did this to protect them if the soldiers came out in search of him. That is, if he made it to the woods.
The only problem with this new path was that it was twice as long as his approach path, leaving him out in the open and exposed for a lot longer.
“Dammit,” Jo said as she brought up her rifle and aimed. “I have to shoot out that damned light if I can.”
The light wasn’t hard to target, and as soon as she had it locked in, she squeezed the trigger. Her bullet flew straight and true. Milliseconds later, it smashed into the light and it shattered, sending a spray of sparks falling to the ground like dying orange fireflies.
“Oh shit,” Del said, knowing immediately that they were in it. Up to their necks and ready to go under with no straws to breathe any fresh air above the shit creek they were now in. Not that it would really matter, he thought. They would be dead any time now, anyway.
Jones disappeared into darkness again, and Jo hoped it would give him enough time to make it to the cover of the tree line.
“Come on,” she said. “Run”
No sooner had these words left her mouth than a new spotlight blazed into life. Unlike the first one, this was found Jones quickly, locking onto him like a laser.
Jo started to redirect her aim when Del fired. His bullet must have glanced off the side of the light because the beam shook like it was in a paint shaker for a moment, but it found Jones again quickly as did a row of bullets zippering across the field in a direct line for his back.
Jones was less than forty yards from the tree line. He tossed his rifle off to the side because it was slowing him down. He made it to thirty yards, and it seemed like he would make it.
Jo watched as the world seemed to slow down, pockmarks appearing in the soft earth, kicking up clumps of dirt and grass just behind Jones. As if he had eyes in the back of his head, he zigged left as the line of bullets churned up the soil beside him. All except one bullet. This one caught Jones in the calf and tore into his muscles, sending out a spray of blood.
He pitched forward in the grass and slid nearly ten feet before coming to rest in the grass less than twenty yards from the dark canopy of trees. He didn’t move at all, and that twenty yards seemed like miles.
Jo discovered that she was holding her breath through all of this. Whoever had to be manning the light had predicted Jones’ path into the woods, and the light splashed onto the trees, making them glow brightly in the darkness. The spotlight operator corrected his aim and slow-crawled the light back to Jones, who laid on the ground, stretched out and unmoving.
Once again, he went from a dark form to a ghost as the light bore down onto him so bright that it almost made him look like a film negative of himself.
Jo finally let out her breath as she watched Jones’ prone form, lying still in the wet grass.
“Is he still alive?” Del asked.
Jo hadn’t taken her eyes off Jones since he had fallen. “I don’t know.”
As if on cue, Jones’ hand twitched, and then his right leg pushed at the ground. From Jo’s vantage point, she thought it looked like he was trying to push his body toward the woods using his good leg to propel him along.
“He’s moving,” she said, and she wasn’t sure if she felt relief or dread. Had Jones been dead, then they could have just made a run for it. The fact that he was alive and still in the fight meant they had a decision to make. This wasn’t like before the world fell, deciding which outfit to wear or what to have for dinner. It was a consequential choice and one that might mean they live or die.
“You know they’re coming for him,” Del said from his position behind a tree.
“I know,” Jo said.
“Then what are we going to do?” Del replied looking into the woods for an escape path. “We can take that left path out of here and live to fight another day.”
“After taking those shots, we’ll have to leave here entirely and not come back,” she responded, and they both knew what that meant. It would leave all their friends and family in peril. “That is if they don’t send those choppers up in the air to find us. Plus, we have to think about Russell and Madison. If we run back to them and they’re following us…” Her mouth suddenly went dry. Very dry, as if she had just marched across a desert.
The night was very quiet, with only a few nocturnal creatures clicking or whirring in the trees for nearly twenty seconds. They both heard the buzzing of insects in the air around them, some like the zombies wanting just a little bit of them. A few birds chirped their dissatisfaction with all the commotion.
An engine started in the distance, and some voices near the building carried on the moist night air.
They were coming, and Jo and Del only had seconds to make up their mind.
“Fuck it,” Del said and poked his rifle around the side of his tree and fired off three quick shots.
Someone cursed across the field and then someone shouted commands that were hard to hear. The spotlight that had been focusing on Jones flicked off him and started roving among the trees. It bounced along like a searchlight at a prison break because that’s what it was. Only, instead of people breaking out, they were trying to get in.
Jo edged around her tree and took aim. A moment later, the report of her rifle filled the air, and the spotlight shattered just like the other one and went out.
Score one for the good guys, Jo thought, but she added that it might be the only points they made that night. She truly expected this to be a lopsided contest, and they clearly had no chance of winning, but that didn’t meant they couldn’t make it a game.
“Spread out,” she yelled to Del. “Take shots every ten feet or so. Make it looked like we have more than just the two of us. That might slow them down some.”
Del took her command and dashed from behind the tree he was hiding behind and found one ten feet to his right. As soon as he made it there, he fired off two quick shots. He didn’t really aim because that wasn’t the point. They needed the soldiers to think there were multiple people ready to start a war out in the woods.
A moment later, he heard shots coming from his left, and he saw the muzzle flash of Jo’s gun. You go, girl, he thought, but deep down, he really felt more like they were reenacting Custard’s Last Stand.
That’s when the soldier’s really opened up on them.
“Holy shit,” Russell said, trying to pick up his pace, but found it hard as his head still felt like it was filled with wet cardboard sloshing around inside it. Some of his double vision had come back, turning single tree trunks into doubles. “It sounds like a firefight up there.”
He snatched the walkie-talkie he had strapped to his waist. “Del, come in. What’s going on up there?”
All he heard was static for the next few seconds. He pressed the talk key again and said, “Del, let us know what is going on up there. We are coming up to provide support.”
Del’s voice came out of the tiny speaker on Russell’s walkie-talkie, “Do not come up here. I repeat -- stay where you are. Jones is down, and we are taking heavy fire.”
“But we can help!”
“The best way to help is stay with the truck and wait for us. I’m sort of busy here, so don’t call back and stay where you are.”
Russell tried to raise Del on the walkie-talkie, but he got no response after several attempts, so he stowed it back on his waist and continued moving forward,
feeling less and less steady with every step.
Initially, there had been only the sounds of a few shots filtering their way on the night air, but it now sounded like a small-scale war. For some ominous reason, this war sounded very one-sided now. It was if one side had decided to go with the shock and awe approach, and Russell very much doubted it was Jo, Del, and Jones bringing all that firepower.
The only benefit of all the shots was that it made it very easy to know where to go. Just head for all the noise. That reminded him that there were other things in the woods that were attracted by loud noises, and this only increased his fear level. The soldiers may bring the firepower, but the zombies brought their teeth and didn’t care if there was a cannon going off. In fact, the louder the noise, the more attracted to it they were.
Yes, he was sure they would come shambling and would add another dimension to their trouble.
Caught up in his own head space, he missed a tree root sticking up and caught his foot on it. He stumbled forward for three very awkward steps then went down in a heap.
Madison heard the noise over all the shooting and came to a stop then ran back to Russell.
“You all right?” she asked.
“Ducky,” he said, as he tried to push himself off the ground just as a wave of vertigo swept over him, driving him back down onto the leaves and twigs that covered the forest floor. The scent of the dried leaves and dirt filled his nose.
“Shit,” Madison said.
“You shouldn’t cuss,” Russell said, his eyes closed and his forehead flat on the ground as the world went all wobbly for him.
“Sorry,” Madison said.
He could tell that she was close by the sound of her voice.
“Can you get back up?” she asked.
“I’m working on it.”
“Should we call Jo and Del again?”
Russell rummaged around on his waist and held out the walkie-talkie after a few seconds. “Be my guest.”
She snatched it from his hands and said, “Del, Jo, come in. This is Madison. Come in. We’re coming your way.”
