by Noah Mann
“So he did kill himself,” I said, hoping that was not just another piece of the larger lie.
Neil nodded, and I saw truth in the silent gesture. He coughed, a dry hacking that he tried to silence by burying his mouth against his arm.
“You all right?” I asked.
“All the talking is drying me out,” he said.
There were clouds building to the west when we’d reached the house. A spring storm was a possibility. With a suitably clean container we could capture some rain to drink. I scanned the basement, but saw nothing that could be used, the toppled shelving having spilled only old paint cans on the floor.
“I’m going to see if I can find something to catch rain,” I told him as I stood, shotgun in hand.
“Rain is fifty-fifty at best,” he said.
“You a weatherman now?”
“Fifty bucks says not a drop falls,” he challenged me.
“You’re on,” I said, looking to the stairs. “I’m going to check upstairs. If there’s nothing there I’ll scrounge at the neighbors for something to set out in the back yard.”
“Be careful,” Neil told me. “They’re going to be looking for us.”
“They’ve got a lot of ground to cover,” I said. “We put some space between us and them.”
Neil considered my assurance for a moment, then nodded.
“Still be careful,” he said. “We’re not soldiers, but we’re damn sure behind enemy lines.”
“I know,” I said, then I made my way upstairs, leaving my friend behind.
Nine
The abandoned house we had taken refuge in was that way for a reason, I learned. Everything of use had been stripped or stolen. Not a single cupboard in the kitchen held anything that could be used to catch rain for drinking water. Nothing in the single bathroom was any more useful. No dusty but useable vases or bowls were to be found in the living room.
I was going to have to venture outside to another house.
At the front door I stood, looking to the street and the neighborhood beyond. No house on this block, or the ones I could see to the south and the north, had been occupied by Perkins’ people. We were likely a half mile past the inhabited zone, I estimated. Eventually, though, some search would be made of this area, though how involved it would be was debatable. Perkins might want every square inch of Klamath Falls searched, from the basements to the rafters, but reality stood in the way of that. He had only so many people, and, if I put myself in his shoes, I would concentrate my efforts on our last known direction of travel. We’d been moving east when we lost our pursuers, and that was where I expected the bulk of his people to be focused.
I stepped from the house, onto the rickety porch, boards beneath me creaking and cracking. The columns that supported its roof and old lattice added for privacy from the sides afforded me some cover where I stood, but I knew I needed to make a decision and move. My choices were fairly straightforward—go left, go right, or go straight. The latter was the least desirable since it would mean crossing the dusty yard, and then the street to reach the houses on the opposite side.
But it also held the most promise, I thought. A pair of structures directly across from where I stood looked to be in better condition than any of the surrounding houses. Why that was I didn’t know. Perhaps their owners had lasted longer than others in the neighborhood and were able to fend off scavengers and intruders. Whatever the reason, despite the risk, I decided that the most fruitful course of action was to start my search there.
I stepped to the edge of the porch and peered fully past the lattice. In the distance I could see lights, but they were stationary, and had to come from the search expanding to the south of us. There was no indication of any threat nearby. If there was going to be a time of minimum risk, it was now.
With steady quickness I left the porch and moved quickly across the yard, then the street, not sprinting. There was no point in risking a trip and fall in the dark on some uneven piece of concrete or buckled asphalt. In less than twenty seconds I was at the front door of the first house.
Or where the door had been. Despite its appearance from across the street, the building had been violated, though not to the extent of those nearby. The front door had long ago been kicked in, splinters of the jamb and its broken strike plate on the floor. I stepped in and saw more familiar sights—upturned furniture, broken windows, and evidence of weather infiltrating through untended leaks in the roof.
I held the shotgun at the ready out of habit as I moved deeper into the house, leaving the front room and finding the kitchen. The cabinets here were all open and stripped bare. Bits of broken glass and plates crunched beneath my boots. The hope that I’d had when surveying the place from a distance began to fade. From within the home looked little different from the one I’d left Neil in.
Garage...
I saw the shape of the structure behind the house through the back doorway, no door left there, the hinges stripped away. Beyond that an alley ran behind the houses, providing access to the single-car garages. I stepped out and into the back yard and began moving toward the small structure ahead. But I never made it.
Light suddenly filled the narrow avenue behind the garage, coming from my right, its source in motion.
A vehicle...
My confidence that we were beyond the area of concern had been misguided, if not outright foolish. Perkins was not going to simply fall for our deceptive move to the east. He was, as we feared, sending his people in every direction to hunt us down.
I turned quickly and ran back into the house, taking cover just inside the back door and peering cautiously out at an angle, catching sight of an old passenger van, spotlights blazing from its missing side windows. It was illuminating the back yards of houses as it cruised slowly northward. No doubt there were armed people behind the glare of the lights, ready to fire upon anything they saw. Upon anyone they saw.
Once the vehicle was past I slipped away from the door and hurried toward the front of the house, but there I was again stopped by what lay ahead. More lights, in the street out front. They were headlights of a dark pickup stopped in the middle of the street, one house south of my location.
And there were men. Armed men. Three of them that I could see. One stood at the open driver’s door of the idling truck, on watch, rifle in hand. The other two had split from their transport, one heading to a house on the west side of the street, and the other to a house on the east.
The house directly south of where I stood.
Damn...
It was a two-pronged search they were running. Lights on one side to, hopefully, spot or flush out the captives who’d escaped, and more overt searchers on the opposite side to survey the interiors of every building. Perkins had committed a large number of his people to the effort, and would press them until they had results.
Until they had us.
I had to get back to Neil. He was in no shape to handle an armed adversary. But between him and me were at least three men with the weaponry to end either of us should we resist. They wanted us back in their leader’s hands. Back in captivity. Back to those cages where we would be tormented and tortured.
That wasn’t going to happen.
I sidestepped into the hallway just off the living room and waited, watching from the shadows as the man across the street emerged from the house he’d just searched and gave a wave to his comrade standing watch at the truck. At the same instant I heard footsteps. Heavy boots mounting the steps and crossing the porch. I eased back fully into the darkness filling the hallway and raised the shotgun, twin barrels over my right shoulder, stock facing forward as I slowed my breathing. Seeking a sense of calm as the moment of confrontation neared.
The footsteps were inside now. They paused, the man who’d come to search the house taking a moment to scan the interior from where he stood. Should he move no deeper into the house and simply brand it empty, leaving to continue on to the neighboring property, the plan I’d hastily crafted woul
d be upset.
But he did not. The footsteps began again, drawing nearer. He was not heading for the kitchen and the back door. He was making his way toward the bedrooms.
Toward me.
My grip tightened on the shotgun as I drew it further back, building a powerful strike, one which I unleashed as the man came around the entry into the hall. For an instant we were face to face in the dark corridor, close enough that a wash of recognition and surprise showed just before the butt of the shotgun stock smashed hard against his face, cratering his skull. He fell backwards at an angle, sliding down the hallway’s wall until he sat awkwardly, head tipped to one side, the AK 47 he’d wielded settled gently across his lap.
I struck him a second time, and a third, the splatter of his blood spraying wet across my face. He toppled fully to the floor now and I seized his AK, taking the two additional magazines he had in a belt pouch and leaving the shotgun next to him. I had firepower now, real firepower, but to use it would be to alert everyone within a half mile, and I couldn’t do that. This had to go down as I envisioned, or we’d be done.
I slipped past the man’s body and back into the living room, maintaining cover as I peered through a window to the street outside and the houses beyond. The other searcher came out and, once again, waved to the pickup’s driver, then made his way to the house where my friend was waiting in the basement. As soon as he was inside I made my move.
The driver who’d been standing watch in the middle of the street was on the opposite side of the pickup and his attention was focused almost entirely on that side. As I came out of the house and crossed the front yard, I was prepared to fire at him should he turn my way. I was prepared to fire at anyone who might see me. But there was no one else, just the driver, holding his position, oblivious as I came around the back of the truck and, as I had before, turned the weapon I wielded around and used the solid wood butt of the stock to deliver a deadly blow to the back of his head.
He dropped like a forgotten doll, his own AK clanking to the pavement as blood spread quickly beneath him. I had hoped this elimination would be as quiet as the first, but it wasn’t, and I ran quickly toward the house where Neil was before the searcher within might react to the sound from outside.
I didn’t get there in time.
“Freeze,” the man said as he stepped from the doorway, his AK 47 shouldered and aimed at my chest. “Drop it.”
He wasn’t yelling. Wasn’t reacting with fury to what he must see past where I’d stopped just shy of the porch. His comrade’s body lay dead in the street, and he clearly had to assume that the third member of their patrol had met a similar fate. Still, he did not explode at me. He had a mission, an objective, and he understood what that meant. Recapturing us was the imperative.
“I said drop it,” he repeated.
I’d already stopped my advance, and now I had to surrender my weapon. And once I did it would be over. If I were to resist, I would be shot before I could bring the AK I’d taken to bear.
You can’t go back...
That thought flashed in my head. Going back would mean eventual death. Here, though, death would come quickly. I had a decision to make.
But, as it turned out, another option presented itself out of the blue.
The man tensed suddenly and his head jerked backward, the AK rising, its aim coming off me just as it loosed a long burst of automatic fire that stitched into the air and shredded the porch roof as he fell backward, finger coming off the trigger as his body dropped and came to rest at Neil’s feet, a bloody knife in my friend’s hand.
“We’ve gotta move,” he said.
He’d saved my life, and his own, by somehow summoning enough strength to do what had to be done. As he crouched and took the dead man’s AK he looked to me where I stood, still.
“Fletch...”
I couldn’t imagine how he’d done what he just had, plunging a knife into the soft spot at the base of the man’s skull to scramble his cerebellum. It had to be the same thing within that had allowed him to let his body wither so he might escape. My friend, who I’d always known was a different kind of person, was more than that. He was singular.
“Let’s go,” he said, weapon in hand as he came to me.
I nodded and we hurried to the truck as the sound of engines racing seemed to build in every direction.
Ten
Neil slipped in behind the wheel and I took the seat next to him.
“The whole world’s coming down on us, buddy,” he said as he floored the pickup and swung the wheel left, steering us down the driveway of the house next to the one we’d taken refuge in. “It’s going to get bumpy.”
The truck fishtailed down the narrow driveway, rear of the bed bouncing off a pair of old fenceposts, the once stout supports shattering after years of weathering. Ahead of us an old, leaning fence made of dogeared redwood boards separated the property from the alley behind it. Neil never slowed, punching through the weakened barrier and then through a similar fence on the opposite side, driving us down the side of yet another house until we reached the street in front of it.
“Reload me,” he said as he turned, heading south on the residential street.
I took the AK that he’d acquired, half its magazine spent by the man he’d killed, ejecting that and inserting one that I’d taken from the man who’d died at my hand.
“I’ll see what we’ve got,” I said as he sped south, then turned west on a connecting street.
The inventory took just a minute. We had five spare magazines for the AKs, a pair of flashlights, two canteens in a shoulder bag, and two cans of beans, one open in the truck’s cupholder on the passenger side.
“Add this to the collection,” Neil said, tossing the bloody knife onto the bag where I had gathered the meager supplies.
“What’s the plan?” I asked.
“The plan is west,” he answered. “Only issue is I don’t know where the hell the best way west is.”
Ahead, through the dim night, a large intersection came into view. An intersection I recognized.
“Take a right up there at that old gas station,” I said.
“You have a map?”
I shook my head at my friend’s ribbing challenge.
“Perkins brought me in past that,” I told him. “I had a great view from the back of his throne-mobile. We came across a bridge. It’s north of here. It crosses the river and the road heads west into the hills.”
“Outstanding,” he said.
He turned us right, the faint outline of the span across the Klamath river ahead and to our left as we drove north, no adversaries in sight.
“They’re in confusion,” Neil said as he accelerated. “And that’s a beautiful thing.”
I suspected that was the spy in my friend talking. The persona that might have worked to foment discord in a foreign land. Whether that skillset was worth anything in this situation was yet to be determined. And hopefully it wouldn’t matter one way or the other as we made our way to Bandon.
“What’s the fuel situation?” I asked.
“Half a tank,” Neil answered after a glance at the unlit dash of the blacked-out pickup.
“That’s not enough to reach Bandon,” I observed.
“If there’s even a viable road to get us there,” Neil commented. “Let’s just worry about—”
The muzzle flashes ahead cut off all discussion, a base of fire directed at us from the east end of the bridge. Neil swung hard left into a parking lot, a few rounds ripping into the truck bed five feet behind us.
“There goes the bridge idea,” he said.
He floored it and crossed the lot, bouncing over the curb and back onto the road, speeding back the way we’d come, more wild fire flashing behind us.
“Just keep going straight,” I said.
My friend passed the turn where we’d entered the wide road at the gas station, paralleling the Klamath River as I turned and bashed the rear window of the cab out with the butt of my AK. I sl
ipped the barrel through and planted my knees on the bench seat, facing backward as two pairs of headlights blazed to life near the bridge. I held my fire, not wanting to announce our position unless it was absolutely necessary.
“They’re on the move,” I said.
“Moving is better than moving and shooting,” Neil said.
That fact remained in effect for just a second more as muzzle flashes pulsed again from the vehicle now pursuing us two hundred yards back, near misses whizzing past or clicking off the asphalt as the long shots reached us. They would be trucks of some sort, I knew, with the passengers in back firing over the cab as the driver focused on running us down.
“Fletch, ahead,” Neil said.
I looked over my shoulder and saw what had caught my friend’s attention. Two blocks from our position a wash of light was building from an intersecting street to the east. The meaning of what we saw was as plain to me as it was to him—more vehicles were moving to cut us off.
“Hold tight,” he said.
Without further explanation he turned hard left at the nearest intersection, steering us away from both the pursuers behind and the intercepting vehicles ahead. As we quickly discovered, though, every route of evasion was an avenue to conflict.
“North side ahead!”
Neil warned me of the threat on his side of the pickup. I looked quickly and fixed on the van at the side of the road, a trio of figures outside. He floored the accelerator and I angled my AK’s aim toward the enemy vehicle as we passed, shots erupting from the surprised shooters. I squeezed the trigger and held it down, adjusting my long burst back and forth, raking their position. A pair of incoming rounds punched through the roof of the pickup after sailing right past my face, but my suppressing fire sent the three who’d opened up on us scattering for cover.
“Get us clear of this,” I said, easing off the trigger with maybe a third of my magazine remaining.
“Trying, buddy,” Neil said.
He turned us again, south this time, then immediately east again, bouncing through dips in an intersection before, once more, taking a southerly direction. The throaty roar of the diesel powerplant beneath the hood was deafening at full speed, but not so much that the distinctive crack didn’t reach us, sounding sharp from the west.
