by Ilsa J. Bick
Something really wrong here. A slight movement to his right, and his gaze dropped in time to see a small field mouse squirm from an empty socket of that lone skull. The animal froze, only its whiskers trembling before it wheeled and scurried away. Something rotten in Denmark, Yorick.
Time to find out what. Time, Tom hoped, to save his kids.
It must’ve been an old mercury switch from a defunct thermostat connected to a battery. Move the garbage, disturb the switch, the leads spark, and boom. An easy bomb.
One second, he was shouting for Weller and dashing toward the church. The next, he was very cold and crumpled on his side, a lucky thing because there was old copper in his mouth, more blood drying under his nose and along his neck. If he’d been on his back, he might have choked to death on his own blood. His chest felt like someone had dropped a boulder on him. His ears hurt, and they whooshed: a good indicator that he still had eardrums to hear with. At first, he thought the sound was only from the blast wave, but when he rolled onto his back, gasping at jags of pain, he saw clots of black smoke chuffing over blue sky and realized that what he heard was the muted chugs of a fire that had yet to burn itself out.
Sitting up was an exercise in slow torture. Everything hurt. He wasn’t coughing up any more of the red stuff, so his lungs might be okay. A blast could kill you a lot of different ways. Some—being vaporized or skewered by shrapnel or bleeding out because your leg was gone—were a lot faster than others. Have the bad luck of being too close to a blast wave, and the hollow organs—lungs, heart, guts—could burst, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. When he was finally up, he propped himself on his elbows, concentrated on moving air in and out of his aching lungs, studied what was left of the church—and realized just how lucky he’d been.
The church looked like something out of a travel brochure advertising tours of castle ruins. The tower had ruptured in a halo of stone and splintered wood. Mangled brass bells and sprays of shattered stained glass glittered on the snow. The blast had been powerful enough to fling the smallest bells toward the forest edging what had been the church’s parking lot. The crowns of several nearby trees, principally heavier evergreens, had snapped while other, thinner hardwoods were bowled over by the blast wind. Three walls still stood, but the rest of the church was a gutted shell surrounded by blasted pews and the fluttering remnants of tattered hymnals.
He ought to be dead. They’d tethered the animals about an eighth of a mile away. He thought he’d covered half the distance back before he’d dropped the reins and sprinted for the church. So, tack on another fifty yards before the explosion? Either way, give or take, he was still too darned close. The fact that he’d been blown back so far, knocked unconscious, and bled from his nose and ears proved that. If the explosion had happened, say, in a town or a narrow alley, the blast overpressure would’ve ruptured his heart and blown his lungs apart. What saved his ass was that the church stood alone, with no nearby structures or even trees to capture and amplify the blast wave.
He was alive because of dumb luck, and that was all.
By some miracle, he still had his weapons: the Uzi on its retention strap, Jed’s Bravo snugged in that back scabbard, and the Glock—Alex’s Glock, as he thought of it—in its cross-draw. He had extra ammo stashed in his over-vest, too, also lucky because the horses had scattered. From their tracks, he knew at least one had not headed back to camp. That, he hoped, would be his ride, but hunting it down now would be a mistake. Instead, he kicked snow to hide his blood, then shucked his vest and used that to scour away the Tom-sized divot where he’d lain and the stumbling tracks he made as he headed into the trees.
They came a few hours later. By then, he’d moved downwind and well into the woods, hauling himself by painful degrees high into the deep recesses of a thick, sturdy cedar. There were three, and he recognized them all. Mellie’s square, compact frame was easy. With his white hair cut high and tight and that black uniform, the way he carried himself, Tom thought the old guy was used to command.
But my God, I know you. His mind flashed to his battle with that blood-eyed girl on the snow. You’re one of the guys I saw watching from the woods.
The third person was a kid, a boy in over-whites. The boy’s head was up, sampling the air. Looking for him. Tom was too far away to see the boy’s eyes, but he knew they were the same maddened red of that Chucky he’d fought to the death. Given the guy in black, Tom thought this must be the same boy he’d spotted in the trees two weeks ago.
But now this kid was riding a horse. And he’s working with people. Tom’s skin dewed with fresh sweat. How is this possible?
He watched as the three made a slow perambulation around the church in an ever-widening spiral. Looking for tracks, trying to figure out if anyone got away. The oldsters bent their heads to the snow, but the kid kept his head up like a bloodhound. The Uzi was silenced, chambered and ready to go, and now he inched a finger over the selector switch. Kill them now? No way anyone will hear the shots. But he wasn’t a sniper, and he might miss. Worse, he was only one person, and he was willing to bet the old commander had a fair number of men. Try to rescue the kids on his own, he’d probably end up dead. Wait for a better time. Think of a plan.
Heart pounding, he watched as they continued their search pattern until the debris field petered out. Mellie and the commander conferred about something; the Chucky only scanned, turning his horse in a slow three-sixty. And then they left, returning to camp the way they’d come.
For the rest of that day and through the night, Tom stayed put, using his retention straps to anchor himself in case he dozed. The orange of the fire eventually diminished. What light there was splashed gray and dim from the waxing moon. The hissing in his ears diminished enough that he heard the flame’s dying crackles and, at some point, a jangle of hardware. That made his pulse ratchet up a notch until he reconsidered that a solitary rider, at night, made no sense. Probably his horse, or Weller’s. He thought about it for a few seconds, then decided he was much better off with a ride than without one. So he called to it as softly as he could, coaxing the animal into the woods, wincing at every crackle and snap of brush and brambles. In the moonlight, he saw the horse slip close to the tree in which he hid, and then stop.
That was the only good in an otherwise very long and terrible night. He still ached, his gimpy right leg complained, and now he was both hungry and thirsty. Scooping snow from nearby limbs, he let it melt down his throat to take the edge off. He even managed a fitful doze.
Mostly, he worried about the kids, and his next move. The one thing he didn’t believe Mellie would do was kill the children outright. It just didn’t fit. True, that commander had Chuckies. They would need food. But why waste kids? More than enough oldsters around to keep the Chuckies happy for a while.
What he kept coming back to was that boy. The old commander was messing around with the Chuckies. But how? And why does he need my kids? There had to be a reason why Mellie had gathered children for her buddy in black. Tom suspected she and the commander wanted the Rule children for the same reason.
Whatever that was.
Except for two dead dogs, a bigger blood splotch that looked as if it might have been a person, and a riderless horse nervously wandering around the horse barn, the farmstead was deserted. The horse trough had been moved, and the stockpile of explosives gear was gone. That, he’d counted on. First principles: all warfare is based on deception.
Every tent had been broken down and taken away—except his, set apart, close to the trees. He stared for a very long time, first from across the corral and on his horse, and then on foot as he worked a careful perimeter, thinking, Fool me once … He bet Finn read Sun Tzu, too.
It took him a while. The snow was all broken up, deeply incised with horse hooves, boots, and—this was a surprise—the cut of at least seven or eight wagons. But he finally spotted what did not belong: a thin curl of det cord coiled around a corner guy and grommet of his tent. Following that took him to a trip-rel
ease hooked to the front zipper. Peering through a seam, he saw a half block of plastique, with a Vietnam-era M28 detonator stuck in one end, molded to the tent’s center pole. The trip-release meant that he’d use more force on the zipper. One quick tug would arm the fuse and then boom.
Not good. He cut the cord with his KA-BAR, then broke down the rest of the bomb. Either they think one or both of us got out, or they’re being cautious. Each scenario was bad news and meant he would have to be doubly careful when he searched the rest of the farmstead.
None of the barns were booby-trapped. He took his time with the equipment shed, studying the roof and where the walls met concrete and then snow. Nothing. Now that he had his gear and binos, he peered in through the one window. Bare sawhorses, empty shelves. Using paracord, he carefully tied one end to the doorknob and strung it out behind. Then he wound the other end around the saddle horn, boosted himself onto the saddle, and spurred the horse into a sudden gallop. Startled, the horse bolted, and the door caromed off its hinges. But nothing blew up.
Save for a single half-roll of magnesium tape and a bottle of aluminum powder that had rolled under a sawhorse, the equipment shed was a metal and concrete shell. Pocketing the magnesium and ground aluminum, he walked out to the cistern. The cap was still in place, but once bitten, twice shy. When he was satisfied it wasn’t rigged, he shoved the heavy concrete to one side and peered in. His breath huffed out in relief. Still attached to an iron bolt on the cap’s underbelly, the black paracord was taut, exactly as he’d left it. Reaching in, he hauled up the heavy pack in which he’d stowed the lion’s share of his bomb-making materials.
Under Mellie’s nose, the whole time.
Clearing a house of potential booby-traps takes time. All the rooms were clear and empty, except Weller’s. Interesting. Both hands on his Uzi, Tom turned a slow look. With its tight hospital corners, Weller’s rack could’ve passed any drill instructor’s muster. From his few changes of clothing in a duffel to his cracked leather dopp kit, everything was squared and ordered. Why not empty the room, or booby-trap it? Two reasons: either the contents held no value … or, on the off-chance Weller survived, they’re telling him to kiss off.
Every soldier carries keepsakes and charms, usually on them or in their over-vests: letters, pictures, Bibles, rosaries, scapulars. His own—a St. George medal from his grandmother and a picture of his little sisters—were tucked in the same sock drawer with his dog tags back home, and so much dust. The tags he wore now were Jed’s. As far as he knew, Weller had no tags, but he was an old soldier and habits die hard.
They were in the dopp kit, the first place Tom looked, and protected by a Ziploc baggy: a newspaper clipping and an old Polaroid. The clipping, almost three years old, read:
HOUGHTON VICTIM REMEMBERED AS “DETERMINED” AND “GOOD FRIEND”
Friends of Amanda L. Pederson recalled a vivacious, generous, and hardworking young woman ready to offer a helping hand and determined to return to school and pursue a college degree.
“Totally devastated,” was how Claire Mason characterized her reaction to the news of Pederson’s disappearance after a freak boating accident in Lake Superior. “I can’t even imagine what she was doing out there with a bunch of college kids in the first place. She couldn’t swim, and can you imagine her poor parents? How they’ll never have a body? It’s just terrible.”
The boat on which Pederson was a passenger went down in the still-frigid waters of Superior after a fire broke out in the vessel’s engine room. Repeated efforts by fellow passengers to free Pederson, trapped below deck, failed, and the vessel sank before a Coast Guard helicopter arrived on scene. Recovery efforts were suspended due to poor visibility and the depth of the lake, which has been recorded at over five hundred feet in that area. No further searches for the missing boat or Houghton resident are planned.
“Amanda was just the nicest girl,” Jack Laparma, a close friend, said. “She’d had some hard times, but she was completely determined, ready to move on.”
Pederson is reported to have enjoyed snowmobiling as well as time spent with family and friends.
The names of Pederson’s fellow passengers as well as the boat’s owner are currently being withheld until a preliminary investigation is completed and a cause of the engine fire can be established. Given the loss of the boat, however, and the reported lack of eyewitness accounts, a source close to the current investigation suggested that the death will be classified as accidental. No criminal charges are currently pending or anticipated.
Pederson is survived by her parents, Claire and Benjamin; a brother, Theodore; and grandparents Ron and Esther Pederson of Houghton, and William and Rosemary Weller of Marenisco.
The picture accompanying the article showed Weller’s granddaughter in jeans and a tee, sitting atop a picnic table. In the background was a river, boats, and a lift bridge.
The Polaroid was so aged most of the color had bled. The ghostly image of two men posed before a Quonset. Each held an M16. Both wore camo battle dress, but only Weller, just as grizzled then as now, sported three tabs on his left sleeve—special forces, rangers, and airborne—and a smoke tucked behind one ear.
The man Tom zeroed in on stood to Weller’s right: grim and blocky, with a barrel chest and thighs like tree trunks. His skull was so large, his dark hair, cut high and tight, looked like the bristles of a broom.
On the back, in faded ballpoint: Finn ’68 Ben Tre. The name of the town or village meant nothing to Tom. He squinted at Finn’s uniform, trying to make out his rank. Major or lieutenant colonel—and was that a medical corps insignia? He thought it might be. Weller’s three chevrons put his rank as a sergeant. A commander and his sarge.
Now, Tom had two names: Chris Prentiss and Finn.
Which monster to take on first … that was the question.
Weller had marked the most likely spots where Rule might post archers, but Tom spotted none, and no arrows came whizzing from the trees. While he was happy not to end up with an arrow through his neck or in his back, Tom began to suspect that something was seriously wrong. By the third block in from the woods, he was positive.
The doors of every house stood open. From the splintered jambs and screens hanging at cockeyed angles, these were forced entries. Each home had been stormed, searched, and then—his eyes drifted to a drippy, red, spray-painted X right of a jamb—ticked off the to-do list. Raids for food and other supplies would be his first guess.
But what if they were looking for Chuckies? If Rule’s children and grandchildren and all their friends had returned, going door-to-door to hunt them down made sense. The timing was about right. Judging from blown snow in front halls, whatever happened was a couple weeks back. But you wouldn’t stop there, would you? There was no timetable, no way of knowing when more kids might show up. You’d mount patrols and guards. So where was everyone?
He turned a slow, careful circle. Long icicles fanged eaves and gutters on those homes with southern and western exposures. Most of the houses facing north were mantled with thick snow. Anyone still around would need to stay warm. He sniffed and got a light scent of wood smoke: drifting down from the northeast and the center of town. He still didn’t hear anything other than the faint sough of a light breeze. But people would be conserving energy, not moving around much.
Something orange and large suddenly slunk around the corner of a two-story to his left. Startled, he spun, Uzi up before he realized what he was looking at. The instant the cat spotted Tom, it froze, one paw poised above the snow. Something furry dangled from its jaws. They regarded one another for a beat. He couldn’t speak for the cat, but his heart was hammering. Evidently unimpressed, the cat trotted up snowy steps, then eeled through an open front door.
Tom lowered his weapon. A cat? This made no sense. You break down doors; you look for supplies. In a starvation situation, pets were fair game. Dogs, he could see sparing; they sensed Chuckies. You needed horses, too. But no one really needed—
If he hadn
’t been staring after the cat, he never would have seen them. As it was, what his eye snagged on was a distant olive-green blur—a parka—and a quick spark of sun in the far woods to the left behind the house.
Theoretically, you could get into Rule any number of ways. Those two boys angling through the trees must have dropped down from the north. Both had rifles and were moving slowly, cautiously, their heads tilted to the snow. They hadn’t spotted him yet, but they would.
Darting up the steps, he bolted into the house after the cat. As soon as he was inside, he noticed two things at the same time: a long-dried bloodstain on the floor and the stink of decay. That cat had a nice stash of rotting mice somewhere. Trotting past a narrow understairs closet to his left, he moved into the kitchen, which was a shambles. Cupboards stood open, drawers had been pulled and dumped. The pantry door was open by a hair. Several floorboards had been pried up, too, both in the pantry and out here, leaving dark rectangular slots wide enough for a person to drop through. The aroma of decay was stronger here, as was the smell of cold dirt from the crawl space under the house. The cat was nowhere in sight.
Sidestepping a gap, he peered over a window sill above the sink. The two boys were just clearing a woodpile alongside a detached garage. Both simultaneously looked over their shoulders at something further back. One boy—smaller, a mop of brown hair—made a warding-off gesture, waving someone back. Bad news, if there’s more than just these two. Craning, he took his eyes away a split second to see if he could make out who else was there, and how many.
It was a split second too long. When he jumped his gaze back, the other boy—older, taller, dark-eyed—was looking right at him.
“Shit!” he hissed. He ducked, already knowing it was too late. But he still might be able to avoid a fight. Pivoting, he started out of the kitchen, intending to head for the second story because it was always easier to defend high and he might be able to make his way out a window. Something flickered to his left, and he saw a boy dashing around to the front and the second, taller boy, down low, wheeling around the kitchen side steps.
