Desolated

by Lou Cadle

  So there were probably four dead or out of the fight, and as many as eight left alive.

  The tripwire crew were in the woods farther up, waiting. The monofilament was stretched across the highway in two places, tied on one end to a tree. The other ends were in fishing reels, ready to be spun to raise the line.

  Vargas might also send his men into the woods, and both the tripwires and spring traps would be useless. He might also order them to shoot all the draftees.

  Dev cursed himself. None of them had thought that last thing through. For all the talking and planning they’d done, for all the possible outcomes they’d anticipated, and the good course corrections that resulted in their plans from that talking, none of them had once thought about there being fifteen friendlies to worry about. And even had they thought of that, no one would have anticipated two of their own would be among them.

  Rod and Misha and their allies on the highway were going to have to take care of themselves. He believed their two could. He hoped they could keep the rest of them safe.

  The draftees might realize what was happening, and flee into the woods or, in the best scenario, grab a fallen rifle and fire it at their captors.

  There was shouting, and more rifle fire, but it was no longer coming this way. Dev crawled another several yards away from the highway and then risked standing and jogged the rest of the way to his assigned position.

  The girls assigned to the dummies were waiting, all in a cluster.

  “Get back to your positions,” he said.

  “What’s happening?” asked Georgia, backing away a step. She looked terrified, and Dev felt a wave of sympathy. She’d never seen battle. Even the sound of it was upsetting to her.

  “The mine worked. At least five of their horses are down, and four men, I think. That leaves eight with rifles, and most are mounted. That’s what the second noise was, rifles firing.”

  “It’s so loud, and there are so many of them,” Yasmin said. She didn’t look quite as panicked as the others, but all three were afraid.

  “Yes. And they are dangerous, so you all stay down on the ground where you’re supposed to be. We’ll be fine if we stick to the plan. I’ll cover the road entrance, and when I give the signal, you start working the dummies. When they figure out there is only one shooter up here, or when they move past us, then we retreat to the house, or to wherever you were assigned next. Right?”

  “Right,” Yasmin said. She turned and ran back to her position.

  The others still looked worried, but walked to their positions and got down.

  He called to them, “You know what to do, just like we rehearsed. It might happen in a minute or two, or it might happen in twenty minutes. We need to hold position until it does, or until our runner comes and tells us to move.”

  C.J. was with Dev’s father near the entrance to their neighborhood. Arch had his own bow and another grenade near there. At least now he would know the grenade would probably work. Both of them would have seen what happened. C.J. might even now be spreading the word up the road.

  Though everyone would have heard the explosion except Brandie, who should be blazing a trail up the hillside.

  Curt was stationed across the main highway. He may have even taken a couple of shots at them already. Zoe and Sierra were in the grain field on their road, waiting for the battle to come to them. Pilar was on his property on the other side, hiding behind the old electric car that the boys had carried out to provide some cover, holding one of the remaining grenades. With him were the two boys who weren’t on the tripwire, with slings and rocks and a scythe—the best weapons they could muster. That was the last point of defense.

  Dev carried his bow to the first firing position he’d picked out. Nothing moved on their dirt road. Not yet. Soon enough, there would be someone. If the enemy dismounted, they could come through the woods, but he’d hear them coming. They “taxed” people for their food. They weren’t real hunters. Their woodcraft would not be better than his.

  Chapter 18

  Misha felt Rod’s weight ease off her. The world had exploded, Rod had thrown her to the ground at the same time, and now gunfire was erupting, taking her back in a flash to her childhood when she’d heard that sound. Some animal part of her wanted to dig her way underground to get safe, but instead she raised her head and saw Rod sprinting for a big rock or something. His shirt was ripped in the back, and a big piece of wood was buried in his shoulder.

  It took her brain a second to recognize the thing he was aiming for was a dead horse. Beyond the place in the highway where the wagon had once been, the other horses were wheeling, spinning, fighting their riders. One’s front hooves came down on another of the fallen men, who screamed.

  Misha realized it was time to move, but though she ordered her body to do that, she couldn’t make herself rise. Bullets were beginning to fly, and it seemed that every direction was dangerous.

  Rod made it to the dead horse, and he launched himself over its carcass. She saw him reach down, and then he flipped himself around, sitting upright, facing the horse, and she could see his face, strain obvious on it. He was trying to move the horse? It seemed so.

  She began to crawl his way to help. Then he fell backward.

  Her heart skipped a beat. Had he been shot?

  No. He leapt up, holding a rifle he must have been pulling out from under the horse. Rod fumbled with it for a second before getting it aimed.

  He fired.

  She couldn’t see what he was firing at. But she crawled his way, not knowing if it was the right thing to do. She wanted to be with her brother, was all. She glanced around as she crawled, looking for another rifle, or a handgun, or anything she could use as a weapon. Behind her, she heard another of the prisoners yell something.

  She glanced back, and she glanced forward again just in time to see Rod get hit.

  It wasn’t one bullet. It was a dozen of them, sprayed from an automatic rifle, cutting right across his belly.

  The world slowed. Misha watched as chunks of his flesh were torn from him and flew off him. He folded and fell without a sound.

  She couldn’t stop the cry that was torn from her throat. A bullet hit the highway right in front of her face, and she rolled over, curling into a ball. Stupid, she realized, but her instincts were stupid and didn’t understand that a bullet could find her no matter if her head was up or not.

  It took her only a second to find her courage again. She leapt to her feet and ran for Rod, throwing herself behind the horse, in a space between it and where her brother lay. The horse partly protected her from rifle fire. Rod was on his side, his eyes open. The smell of shit was strong, and she couldn’t tell if it was his or the horse’s. She crawled from the safety of the horse, reached out and touched his face, but his eyes didn’t change. A single bullet hit his shoulder, and there was no reaction.

  Her brother was dead.

  The grief was like a bullet to her own heart, so sharp and painful, she didn’t think she could bear it. Then, in a flash, it turned to anger.

  Someone would pay. They all would pay. She lunged for the rifle, got it in her hands, and took a deep breath. Then she sat up and fired in the direction she believed the bullets that had cut down Rod had come from. She wasn’t very good at it. The first two shots went way high, but she lowered the rifle and remembered to sight down the top of it, and she let loose two more rounds. Her first true shot hit one of the horses, just being brought under control, and the second bullet hit the leg of its rider.

  Then she was out of bullets.

  She dropped the rifle and rolled, in toward the downed horse, realizing she was lying in a puddle of its blood and worse, but pushing in to it anyway, as close as she could get, burying herself along the dead animal’s body, feeling a hard bit of the saddle poke her in the side. She covered her head with her arms and closed her eyes.

  She knew she could be shot at any time, following Rod into death. She waited for it. And when she was still alive a minute
later, she was surprised. At that point, she heard yelling. It was Vargas, and he was telling his men to cease fire. “Collect any rounds you see. All the rifles.”

  Another voice replied, “We lost the ammo stores when the wagon went.”

  “I know. But there might be loose rounds rolling around. Grab any you see. I’ll cover you all while you do.”

  Misha could not see Vargas or his men from her spot against the horse, but she could see the rest of the prisoners, who were looking around now. She waved frantically at her fellow draftees, motioning them to get into the woods. They weren’t armed, and if the soldiers were trying to conserve ammunition, they’d likely not waste it on unarmed prisoners, but why take the chance? The urge to yell the explanation at them was strong, but stupid. Finally, one of them looked at her, and her message seemed to register.

  “Get into the woods, everybody,” he said. “Over there.”

  They began to move, some crawling at first, some jumping up and sprinting for the woods on the far side of the highway. No one shot at them. In two minutes, they were all out of sight.

  Misha stayed where she was, trying to think. What could she do? The rifle was still right there. Was there any possibility they stored extra ammunition somewhere on the horse? She felt around the saddle. They’d had rolls of blankets, and a sling thing for the rifles, and side bags—saddle bags, hadn’t Curt called them?—on most of the horses.

  She felt around until she found a metal snap. She unsnapped it, and beneath her hand was a handle of a knife. She pulled it out and looked at it. Slightly curved, with a blade longer than her hand. It was better than no weapon. She couldn’t find any bullets. She held on to the knife, decided to play dead for now, and waited for her chance. For Rod. She’d kill one of them for Rod.

  CURT WAS BIDING HIS time. He’d heard the mine go off and had been surprised—and relieved—that it had worked. Only then had he edged his way forward quickly, not worried about making noise. His movement would not be heard over the screams of man and beast. He made it to a good thick tree to use as cover at the edge of the highway and watched as one horse bolted, riderless, up the hill.

  Good. The more of them who didn’t have the advantage of shooting from the height of horseback, the better. He was, frankly, surprised at the horses’ reaction to the explosion. He’d have thought they’d trained their horses better around gunfire.

  Maybe the mine detonating was something the animals had never heard. That gave him hope. It meant their enemy wasn’t an elite military unit, trained for every possibility, equipped with every possible weapon. They were just men, maybe eight of them remaining, from the looks of it, but one of those was on the ground, his arm flopping about, as if he was trying to move and failing.

  Against seven men, they would have a chance. Not a great chance, not with the disparity in weapons, but a chance.

  It was time for him to bring those numbers down. He had a quarrel loaded in the crossbow already. He raised it and aimed for a horse that was calmer than the rest. The target was good.

  He let the quarrel fly. He didn’t look to study the effect, just loaded a second quarrel in. He had lathed these himself, back when there was still electricity. He had pulled each precious quarrel from many a game animal, cleaned it, and re-sharpened it with a hone. He knew his weapon like he knew his own body.

  A man was standing on the ground, with a fully automatic rifle, military issue, spraying bullets across the highway, at the rise on the Quinn property. He turned, changed where he was shooting, and shot toward the back of the line. Curt saw a prisoner fall, and while he wondered who it had been—not one of the man’s own, surely—he didn’t worry about it, just aimed at the shooter.

  The quarrel buried itself in his chest. He went down.

  Curt loaded another quarrel and tried to count the remaining enemy as he picked his next shot and cocked his weapon.

  The horses were calming down now that the automatic rifle had been silenced. Men on horseback were taking shots, and Vargas was yelling something—telling them to cease fire. Curt heard, “There might be loose rounds rolling around. Grab any you see.”

  He stepped out and fired at Vargas, still mounted. The horse shifted as Curt fired, and the quarrel zipped past Vargas’s shoulder.

  Curt ducked back as rifle fire tried to find him. The trunk of the tree took three rounds. He heard it and felt the force transmitted through the wood. He dropped to his knees, just in case, and reloaded his crossbow. He heard the clatter of hooves on the highway. Vargas knew where he was, so it was time to be somewhere else.

  Keeping the tree between him and Vargas for as long as he could, he ran bent over, then swerved, making for another fat tree. No more shots came. He made it another several yards, looked back, and realized no one was following him. He kept moving. He’d go uphill past the rise, cross over, and come back around through that grain field, joining Sierra and Zoe and shooting from there.

  He pushed his aching joints as fast as they would carry him.

  PILAR COULD HEAR THE battle had begun. Part of him wanted to run toward it, to protect his child and grandchildren. Part of him wanted to run for the hills. He was getting too old for this crap.

  C.J. ran up, excited. “The grenades exploded, did you hear?”

  “I heard.”

  “Arch says that means yours and his will probably work.”

  “I hope so.” He had a single grenade, and if he got the chance, he’d throw it. He’d rather not have to kill up close, but he had a machete with him if it came to that. Good luck with a machete against a rifle though. “Any change to the plan?”

  “Not yet. Arch says they’ll come in on our road, but I don’t know how he knows that.”

  “He may be right, but you watch your back, okay, kiddo?”

  “I’m fast,” C.J. said, and proved it by running back up toward the action. Pilar had the urge to grab him and tackle him. Then tie him to a tree, well out of the way of harm. But he didn’t, of course.

  Pilar hated this—hated this day, hated this necessity. He was old enough that he had hoped to live his life out, collecting eggs, hoeing weeds, canning green beans, maybe living long enough to see Zoe have a child of her own. He wanted peace—love and peace and freedom. It was all he had ever wanted.

  Now all of that was at risk.

  MISHA COULD HEAR A booted man walking closer to her position. He was checking bodies, checking for bullets, she supposed. The men had gotten themselves organized. No one from the neighborhood appeared, but why would they? Maybe they had set the explosives some time ago and fled up into the mountains. It might be just her against all these men.

  Maybe she should have run when the other prisoners did. Maybe she should play dead. She glanced down at herself and thought the amount of blood on her would convince anyone she wasn’t a threat.

  But then she thought about Rod, whose body she could not bear to look long at. He’d been her brother in every possible way. It didn’t matter that her mom hadn’t given birth to him. He’d moved in with their family, and Mom had loved him and treated him the same. Emily’s silence and solitude had made Misha miss the fighting and playing they’d done before the bad things had happened, and Rod had filled a hole in her life. They’d worked together and played together and gotten in trouble together. As they’d grown up, the bond had only deepened.

  And these men had killed him without a thought. He was nothing to them. He was family to her. So, no, she shouldn’t have run. She should wait here, and take her chance, and avenge Rod. It’d break her mom’s heart to lose them both, but Misha had to do what was right.

  The man’s steps came closer. Misha tried to relax her face muscles. She breathed shallowly, ready to hold her breath should he come closer. If he leaned over her, that’d be best. She could drive the knife up into him, maybe pull him down to increase the force of the stab. Behind the protection of the horse carcass, she could finish him off without anyone else seeing, take his rifle, if he had one, and fire a
t the other men.

  They’d probably still get her in the end, but if she could kill one, maybe two, then she’d have done all she could. If she killed two, she couldn’t call it a fair trade. No, a hundred would not be nearly enough of a trade for Rod. It wouldn’t make him alive again. She swallowed back the urge to cry. Dead people don’t cry. She should play dead until it was time.

  The man was coming closer. Closer. “Hey, Otis!” a voice called. “Get the first aid supplies and get over here.”

  The footsteps retreated.

  Damn.

  She lay in the warm blood, waiting for her chance.

  Chapter 19

  It seemed a lifetime before Dev saw movement again. He knocked on a tree, hoping it would alert the others if they had grown hypnotized by the boredom of waiting.

  The men were not on horseback, but they were leading their horses. In fact, the horses formed a wall around them. The horses were cooperating, but animals didn’t march as neatly as people, and here and there a shift in their gait opened a brief window for Dev. It would be hard to hit the men through that.

  But killing two or three horses would work nearly as well. That would expose them.

  Dev nocked an arrow. “Ready,” he said, in a normal tone of voice, which he knew the girls could hear. “Now!” He stepped out, shot an arrow at the mass of horses, and stepped back, not bothering to see if he’d done any damage. He dashed to another spot.

  The dummies popped up, one, then another. The movement drew fire.

  Only a single round. They were being more careful with their ammunition. Dev nocked another arrow.

  The girls were on the move. One pulled a third dummy’s rope. It sprung up, and Dev stepped out again, shot, and ducked back. The fourth dummy went up. Another round was fired.

  “They got the dummy in the head,” Yasmin said.