Half Past Midnight

by Jeff Brackett

  My heart jumped into my throat. “Where is she?”

  “We realized what was going on then, and we jumped after the other guy.” He nodded to another body, fallen behind the dinner table. “But he had his pistol out by that time. Andrew got to ’im first, and then me, and by God, Leeland, Megan was right there with us. She was so freakin’ fast!” He began to sob. “She just wasn’t quite fast enough. None of us were.”

  I was frantic. “Eric, where is she?”

  Eyes filled with tears, he pointed upstairs. “I don’t even remember hearing the pistol go off. She tried, Leeland. God in Heaven, I never saw nobody try so hard!” His emotions finally got the better of him, and he sobbed out the rest. “She just wasn’t quite fast enough.”

  I tore up the stairs, following a trail of blood so solid it looked as if someone had painted it on the carpet-a trail that led to Megan. She was sitting on the floor of a bedroom with her eyes closed, leaning back against the wall. Her shirt was nearly solid red, covered with blood, her face and hands coated as well. I wanted to scream, but my voice caught, trapped behind the constricting of my throat. My daughter… my baby!

  Then she opened her eyes, and I did scream as I stumbled back against the doorframe. “Dad?” she sobbed. “Daddy?” She staggered to her feet, and I barely caught her as she fell against me. It took a moment for me to comprehend what she was saying as she sobbed against my chest. At the sight of Andrew’s body lying on the bed, I finally understood.

  “They killed him. They killed him.” She kept repeating it, her personal mantra, her litany of anguish.

  “She wouldn’t leave him.” Eric’s voice behind me gave me a start. “How could I do less? The others in the neighborhood left a few minutes ago, but Megan wouldn’t go until we got him up here and laid him out proper. She wanted a few minutes alone with him, so I went downstairs. When I heard you comin’ over the fence… well, you know the rest.”

  I suddenly felt self-conscious, holding my daughter in front of Eric, while just a few feet away, his son lay dead. I knew how he must be feeling since I had just run that gamut of emotions myself. But mainly I was just grateful that it wasn’t Megan lying on that bed.

  He didn’t seem to notice, though. He stared sightlessly at Andrew’s body.

  “Where were the others going, Eric?”

  “Big Cypress Creek.” His voice was as distant as his sight. “Said they’d wait there for a little while ’til they could figure out what to do next.”

  “How many of them?”

  He finally pulled his eyes away from Andrew’s body and turned to me. “’Bout fifty, I guess. But a few of ‘em were hurt pretty bad, so there might be some that didn’t make it.”

  “Can you show me the way? I’m supposed to help gather folks up and get them to Amber Peddy’s place as soon as I can.”

  Eric nodded. “Go on downstairs. Give me a minute with Andrew.”

  Megan sobbed as I half-carried her out of the room and down the stairs. We waited by the front door until Eric came and led us out without a word. As we left the street, I looked back to see the house aflame, burning from the upstairs bedroom down. Turning to Eric, I saw tears and anguish, but mostly I saw hatred-raw, burning hatred for those who had taken his son. I never once saw him look back.

  We made it to the creek with no trouble and found the impromptu meeting place where Eric’s neighbors, along with others, had gathered. More than a hundred people were assembled trying to cope with the fact that their lives had just been irrevocably altered in the last hours as much as they had been on D-day.

  I sat Megan at the edge of the water and began to clean the blood off of her while listening to the frightened whispers of the crowd. Megan was in shock, unresisting, but not helping either, so it took me a few minutes. As I finished, I scanned the faces around us.

  It was immediately evident that these people had absolutely no idea of what to do next, so it took little coaxing to convince them to accompany me to the rendezvous at Amber’s. We broke into three groups, and each took a different route to gather as many people as possible along the way.

  A ragtag parade of Rejas refugees, our group skirted the town, gathering others before making it to my home just before the appointed time. When I got there, I had to push my way through a crowd to make it to the house. People milled about, crowded together like the proverbial sardines in a can.

  Finally reaching the back door, Megan and I entered to find the inside even more chaotic than the yard. Debra, Cindy, and Zachary, as well as several others I didn’t know, were busy tending the more seriously wounded. Debra saw us as we came in and ran to help as I led Megan inside.

  “What happened?” Her voice shook, and she was obviously fighting to keep control. “Oh, my God! Is this blood on her? Her whole shirt is…” she trailed off and frantically began to unbutton Megan’s shirt. I closed the door behind me to preserve my daughter’s modesty.

  “She’s not hurt, Deb.” Debra didn’t stop until she had confirmed it for herself. Then she turned frightened eyes to me.

  I hesitated, not wanting to mention what had happened in front of Megan. But then I thought that any reaction was better than the stupor she’d been in since I took her out of the Petry’s house. “They got Andrew.”

  “Oh, God…” She put her arms around her daughter.

  “Zachary,” I jerked his attention away from the blood on his sister. “Go get Megan another shirt from her closet.” He ran.

  I turned back to Debra. “It all happened right in front of her.” I studied Megan’s face as I spoke, hoping to see some reaction, but she just stared at the floor.

  “Where’s Amber?” I wanted her to have a look at Megan to make sure there wasn’t anything wrong with her beyond the emotional shock of losing her fiance.

  “I think she’s still at the hospital.” Her voice quavered a bit as she continued, “I haven’t heard from her since she left this morning, anyway.”

  It made sense. Amber wouldn’t leave with people still under her care.

  Zach returned with one of his sister’s shirts and handed it to Debra.

  “Is Ken back yet?” I asked.

  Cindy had come over by then, and she answered, “He’s out at the number three stash.”

  That was about a half-mile into the woods to the south of the house. “Okay, I’ve got to talk to him and find out where we stand. If anything happens while I’m out-” I stopped, realizing that I had no idea what to do if we were attacked here and now. “I guess we play that one by ear,” I finished lamely, and ducked out the door to find Ken and Jim.

  It was a fight to shove my way through the massive crowd in the back yard. People milling, moaning, sitting, standing, staring… but nowhere did I see anyone who appeared to know what they were doing. Most had a bewildered look in their eyes. It was a look I could relate to, for though all of us had become accustomed to the idea that violence was more prevalent now than it had ever been before D-day, only Ken and a few other veterans had ever seen the kind of destruction we had just witnessed.

  Rejas was at war. Only now could I really begin to understand what that meant.

  I found Ken and Jim, as well as most of the other committee heads, coming back toward the house through the woods. Ken squeezed my shoulder and smiled wearily. “Good to see you made it.”

  I simply nodded. Maybe I was still a little shocked at everything I had seen, but I just didn’t know what to say.

  “I’ll second that.” Jim clapped me on the back hard enough to stagger me for a second. “I still need to pick your brain about this General Troutman o’ yours.”

  Turning to walk back with them, I rubbed my aching neck. My mind struggled for a moment, trying to come up with something to say. “Did you get all the supplies passed out?”

  “Yeah. It took less than twenty minutes to empty all three caches.”

  I blinked. “But there were hundreds of guns. There was food, and tools, and…”

  “I know,” Ken int
errupted, “but have you looked at how many people there are out there?”

  We stopped as we re-entered the clearing at the back of the house.

  “Take a look for a minute,” Jim advised, waiting beside Ken as I scanned the area. Amber’s was a huge backyard by the standards that I had been used to in the Houston suburbs. Nearly three acres of cleared land. I tried counting the number of people in an area roughly equivalent to a tenth of the yard-just over two hundred. Multiplied by ten, that gave us more than two thousand people.

  “Good Lord! So many people-” I stopped when I saw Jim shaking his head. “What?”

  “Rejas had nearly seven thousand people this mornin’.” His words put the crowd in proper perspective. “This ain’t near crowded enough for my likin’.”

  Undoubtedly, hundreds, possibly even thousands, were still scattered throughout the woods, unaware of our grouping at the homestead. But as much as I might wish otherwise, I couldn’t believe that more than four thousand of our people were wandering around out there. Our dead must number in the hundreds, at least. The rest had to still be in town, either fighting, or captured if Larry’s army had been instructed to take prisoners.

  “Oh, my God.” I turned to Ken. “We’ve got to go back. There are too many still back there.”

  The faint sounds of gunfire from the direction of town punctuated my words, but Ken shook his head. “With what? We’ve got a couple of thousand people. Some are wounded; some are kids. Altogether, I’d guess we have about seventeen hundred, at the most. Seventeen hundred civilians with whatever guns and ammunition we could give them. A few had time to bring their own or take weapons off of the soldiers they killed. But still, I estimate that less than half of us have any kind of firearm.”

  I looked again and saw that he was right. We had concentrated on hiding most of our weapons and supplies before Larry’s troops got into town. “We’ve still got to do something! Send back small armed groups to help gather more of our people.”

  Bowing to his experience as a vet, Jim turned to Ken. “Would that work?”

  Ken shrugged. “It’s a gamble. We could just as easily end up losing whoever goes back, and their equipment, and still not get anyone out of town.”

  “What if we send out some groups to help get people out, and others to get to some of the stashes where we hid guns and supplies? At least some of them are bound to get through! And we’d be bringing back enough supplies to make it worth the risk.” I was nearly pleading.

  Jim turned from me to Ken, and back again. “I don’t know. I don’t like leavin’ folks in town any more than you do, Leeland. But I got a bunch of ‘em here an’ now that I’m responsible for, too.”

  Afraid he was going to waffle, I made a stand. “I’m going back. If I have to do it alone, I will, but I’m going back. There are too many people back there.”

  The mayor opened his mouth to protest, but stopped when he realized there really wasn’t anything he could do to stop me.

  Ken made it worse. “I guess you’ll need someone to show you the back trails again.” He looked at Jim. “I’m going with him.”

  Mayor Kelland’s brows tried to reach his hairline. “But I thought you were the one that was against all this!”

  “I just said it was a gamble.” He paused as if to gather his thoughts. “I figure our people’s lives are worth the risk.”

  Jim blew out a deep breath. “Okay. Ya’ll gather up as many as you think you’ll need. I’m gonna get the rest of these folks deeper into the woods.” He turned back to me. “Nice as this place may be, it’s just too close to town. Sooner or later that bunch’ll find it, an’ I’d rather not be here when they do.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  He turned to Ken. “You know the old Vogler fertilizer plant?”

  “Yeah. That’s a bit of a walk, isn’t it?”

  “Yep. But it’s also on the other side of Cypress Creek and the reservoir. I’d like to see ‘em try to get a tank in there if we rig the bridge with some of that dynamite ya’ll had stashed out back.” He grabbed my arm. “I ain’t gonna complain about you not sharin’ that before now, since it all works out in our favor this time around. But you ain’t got nothin’ else like that hidden around here, do ya?”

  “Sorry,” I told him, “you got it all this time.”

  “Well, it was worth askin’.” He looked disappointed. “Don’t guess it matters that much, I understand that you can do some real nasty things with fertilizer, if you know how to mix the ingredients right.”

  I snapped my fingers as an idea formed. “Did Wayne Kelley make it out?”

  Ken nodded. “I think so. I’m pretty sure I saw him helping with the wounded.”

  The mayor chuckled. “Yeah, I guess a chemistry teacher might come in handy, huh?”

  “Especially with some of the recipes I have in my library. Give me a couple of minutes to get the right books, and he ought to be able to mix up enough mayhem to… well, enough to stop a tank!”

  “By damn, that’s the best news I heard all night!” Jim headed to the house at a brisk pace. “C’mon, fellas, we got things to do.”

  Chapter 13

  August 17 / Midnight

  Grande cite a soldats abandonnee,

  On n’y eu mortel tumult si proche:

  O qu’elle hideuse mortalite s’approche,

  Fors vne offence n’y sera pardonnee.

  Great city abandoned to the soldiers,

  Never was mortal tumult so close to it:

  Oh, what a hideous calamity draws near,

  Except one offense nothing will be spared it.

  Nostradamus — Century 6, Quatrain 96

  Deja vu.

  Once again, I watched my family drive away, though this time they had a considerable entourage. The van was loaded with wounded, as was the Simms’ pickup, which Cindy drove. In addition, Ken had hooked an old flatbed trailer to his backhoe, and it, too, was filled with wounded. Jim drove the backhoe at the front of the convoy, guiding his people like Moses headed for the Promised Land. All others walked.

  Though I had never been to the Vogler plant, the others told me it was about fifteen miles north of Rejas. More than three hours at a brisk walk, and not many seemed to be walking all that briskly on this night. I guessed it would probably take closer to four or five, barring unforeseen problems. I didn’t care to speculate on what those problems might be.

  Ken and I turned back to our group-twenty men and eleven women, all armed and dressed in dark or camouflaged clothing. Our firearms ranged from deer rifles to Ken’s AR-15 and, while the ammunition supply wasn’t exactly critical, if things got intense, none of us could afford to get trigger-happy. Once more, I wore my old paintball gear, complete with the trusty smoke grenades that had stood me in such great stead before. The faces around me were those of some of my finest students. Seven of them had been part of the Rejas police force.

  I looked closely at those faces-Ken, the man who had gone from stranger to brother during the last couple of years; Mark, the quiet, gentle giant who helped me on the forges each morning; Eric Petry, Andrew’s father, who had obvious reasons for being with us; Sarah Graham, Rene, Jenna, James. I wanted to remember each one because odds were, some of us wouldn’t make it through the night.

  Ken broke the silence. “I guess this falls into the security category.” He got a couple of half-hearted smiles, but most of us appeared to be too nervous to appreciate his humor. If they felt anything at all like I did, they were rapidly discovering that it was one thing to say you were ready to jump back into the fray, but it was quite another to face the idea after having had time to think about it.

  “Security is my department,” he continued, “and that’s why I’m here. If any of you have any second thoughts, leave now and no one will think any less of you. I know it sounds a little cliched, but it’s true. We can use you to help protect the convoy.”

  He waited a moment. “All right, then. Line up in single file. I’m point. L
eeland, you take the rear. When we get to the edge of town, we split into groups of five. Odd man goes with me.”

  Ken continued talking as we shuffled into position. “Our targets are the abandoned fabric store on Bellmont, the concession booth at the football stadium, the storage room at Felix’s Video Rental, the back room at Computer Outlet, and the B amp; S Furniture Warehouse. All of those places are major stashes of food, tools, and weapons that we need to get to the fertilizer plant. We also need to find as many of our people as we can and get them out, if possible. Just don’t take any fights that you can’t win. You can’t help anyone if you’re dead.” He stopped, then opened his mouth as if he wanted to say more. Closing it again, he took a deep breath and shook his head. “Everyone count off. One through five, I’m one.”

  Sarah Graham was next in line. “Two!”

  “Three!” “Four!” “Five!” “One!”

  I finished the count with, “One!” I wondered if Ken had intentionally put me in a position to be in his group.

  “Group One will take the fabric store on Bellmont. Group Two takes the football stadium. Group Three takes Felix’s Video Rental. Group Four, the Computer Outlet, and Group Five takes B amp; S Furniture. Everybody know where your targets are?”

  We nodded. Once again, Ken looked as if he wanted to say something. Finally, with his lips held in a tight line, he gave another curt nod. He seemed to be reassuring himself that he was doing the right thing. “Okay, people, let’s go get ’em.”

  Ken led us at a dogtrot back toward town. I took one last look back at the other, larger group leaving the house for the plant before I turned and followed Ken.

  As we began the trek back toward Rejas, we could still hear occasional sounds of fighting, but they were becoming more and more infrequent, as if one side was being worn down. It frightened me to think that it was probably our people on the losing side.