Beauty and Dread

by Nicki Huntsman Smith

  When the bullets stopped flying, she turned her head to get a visual of their enemy.

  “They must be conserving their ammo!”

  The back of Sam’s golden head nodded. He didn’t let off the throttle.

  They were a football field away from Isaiah and his army. Sam kept going, and soon nobody was shooting at them.

  Ten minutes later they skidded to a halt under a copse of cottonwoods near a desolate farmhouse. She couldn’t even see the highway from there, which meant they couldn’t be seen from the highway either.

  The world was preternaturally quiet after the insanity of what had just transpired.

  Sam was alive!

  “Dani, you have to let go of me. You’re safe. Let’s take a breather.”

  She held on, her arms encircling him with a death grip.

  “I’m still a little tender there. Dolores got me pretty good.”

  She lessened her grip, but wouldn’t let go. Because the sooner she did, the sooner Sam would turn around and get a clear look at her face.

  “It’s okay. We got away.”

  He gently disentangled himself from the one-sided bear hug and stepped off the motorcycle. She stayed perfectly still, following his movements, resisting the urge to cover her face with her hands, dreading when he would turn around. What would she see on his face? Shock? Horror? Revulsion? Or worse, pity?

  Instead, there was the beautiful Sam smile, like March sunlight shining on winter-pale skin.

  “I knew you made that stuff up about being in love with Pablo just to get me to leave. I knew it the moment you said it, but I figured it was best to play along. Then when I was shadowing the army, Dolores got me when I was resting. Anyway, it took me some time to heal well enough to catch up. Then I went on ahead of the army and scouted the perimeter of the town. Steven’s done a good job locking things down, but you would have done better.”

  As she watched Sam talk, her hand fluttered up to her face, ignoring the directive of her brain to Stay Away! Her fingertips told a horrific Brothers Grimm tale of what they found there.

  “Sam,” the word came out a croak; a fitting vocalization for someone so hideous.

  “I know you’re worried about your face. I told you before that you’re beautiful no matter how bad the cuts are.”

  “It’s so much worse now.” She had to break eye contact. It was too painful looking at that handsome face from the vantage of Ugly Girl.

  “You’re smart. You should know that it doesn’t matter what’s on the outside. All that matters is what’s on the inside. We are soul mates, Dani. Nothing will ever change that. You could have warts and a bald head and I wouldn’t care. How can you not know that?”

  He kissed her lips, being careful to hold her face in a way that didn’t cause pain.

  “I love you so much, and I always will. No matter what. You are my forever and always,” he said.

  She didn’t realize she was crying until the salty tears began to sting her wounds.

  “Now, we have to get going,” he continued. “We have about ten minutes to get through all the booby traps. Steven will need our help, for sure. Are you ready?”

  She nodded. His smile was a watery distortion through the tears she couldn’t stop.

  “Suck it up, daffodil! We have work to do.”

  Chapter 53

  “How did you get through?” Steven’s tone was a mixture of frustration and relief.

  “We came through the north, just like half of Isaiah’s army is going to do,” Dani replied.

  Pablo found it difficult to look at her face. It was much worse in person than seen through the binoculars from a mile away. It didn’t seem to diminish her confidence, though. She was still overbearing, but there was something new in her demeanor; the jagged edges and sharp corners had been smoothed down a bit. She seemed almost...respectful.

  He was relieved that she and Sam stood with them near the southern barricade. Isaiah’s army was less than a half mile away now. According to Dani, a faction would also be approaching from the north, not the east as Steven had anticipated.

  “Did you see them?” Steven demanded.

  “We didn’t have to. That’s what I would have done. No offense, Steven, but Isaiah is better at this shit than you. Fortunately, he’s not as good as me. That’s why these guys,” she indicated the army advancing toward the southern barricade, “are going so slowly. They’re giving the flanking group time to get into position in the north.”

  “We didn’t secure that perimeter as well. There wasn’t time.”

  “That’s why you need to pull all your shooters from the east and west and send them north.”

  “That will leave us exposed on those sides.”

  “Yes, but it won’t matter since the bad guys won’t be coming from those directions.”

  She might have been speaking to a slow-witted child. Pablo got the sense she wasn’t even doing it as an intentional insult. She was genuinely trying to be patient with a slower thinker.

  With a smirk he said, “We’re running out of time.”

  Steven nodded and pulled a walkie-talkie from its belt holster.

  “Alpha and Gamma teams, fall back and rendezvous with Zeta at their location.”

  “What? Why?” Chuck’s static-filled reply was immediate.

  “That’s an order. We have new intel.” Then to Dani, “You better be right.”

  “I’m right.”

  Almost as an afterthought, he pressed the button again. “Lisa, tell my sister I didn’t fail her. She’ll know what that means.”

  “Roger that. Take care of my man down there.”

  Pablo actually felt sorry for Steven when he saw the anguish wash over his face. Lisa’s man Ed, along with Calvin and Annie Oakley, were the first casualties of a battle that hadn’t even begun yet but was just moments away now.

  “Everyone into position!” Steven yelled.

  ###

  As Pablo stood on the cracked blacktop with a cold wind blowing across the back of his neck, he felt weirdly calm and not wholly...there. A strange detachment took the place of the adrenaline-fueled anxiety from moments before. A sudden notion occurred to him: he had been placed in that specific location at that precise moment in time to observe a chain of events that were imminent and far-reaching in their significance. Perhaps that’s how Homer felt those last fifty-three days of the Trojan War.

  Unlike Homer, he didn’t have the luxury of being merely an observer, a fact that was underscored by the sound of the approaching army just beyond the southern barricade.

  Pablo jogged to the Toyota sedan parked seventy yards from the debris pile and slid in behind the steering wheel. On the passenger seat lay his allotment of shells for his shotgun and the extra clips for the Glock that was strapped to his hip. None of the firepower would be necessary if everyone did their job perfectly and the invaders behaved exactly as Steven anticipated.

  And nobody but Steven thought that was even a remote possibility.

  He reached for the detonator that had also been placed in the passenger seat and peered through the windshield, waiting for the first figures to come around the barricade. The windows of the Toyota were lowered; he could hear the screams of horses and humans alike as they encountered the Punji traps. He watched Dani and Sam take up positions on either side of the barricade, a bit too close to the IEDs for his liking, but it was too late to worry about that.

  His walkie-talkie squawked.

  “In position at Zeta. We have a visual.” Chuck’s voice. “They’re coming.”

  “Told you.” Dani’s voice, casual and calm. “Chuck, give me a number.”

  “Forty or fifty. Shit! We were not expecting this.”

  “Steven, pull your snipers out of downtown and send them north.” Dani’s voice again.

  Silence on the walkie-talkie. Pablo heard more screams, closer now.

  “Steven!”

  “No. We need them at the redoubt location.” Steven’s voice was deadpa
n.

  “Fuck that. If they get through, we’re screwed and you know it.” Dani hadn’t lost her cool, but she was getting close.

  Pablo pressed the talk button. “He doesn’t want to send his son into danger,” he said into the Motorola, then watched through the windshield as Dani shook her head. She was crouched beside a feed store, peering south around the brick corner.

  “That’s bullshit, Steven. Everyone is making sacrifices. Jeff, you roger me?”

  “Roger that, Dani. We’re on the way.”

  Pablo smiled at the rebellious tone he heard in the boy’s voice. He imagined the dismay the father must be feeling and the smile vanished.

  “Pablo, fingers on those buttons.” Dani again.

  “Roger,” Pablo said into the walkie-talkie. “You’re kind of close,” he added.

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  “If you say so.” He set the walkie-talkie next to the shotgun. “Amelia, what are you doing back there?” he said to the rearview mirror.

  “Just backing you up, my dear.”

  “You’re supposed to be at the greenhouse.”

  “We both know that was never going to happen.”

  He smiled at the tranquil face with the old-soul eyes.

  The next moment, all hell broke loose.

  Chapter 54

  Pablo found himself mesmerized by the sight of the handsome man astride the gleaming horseflesh. The spectacular beast used its hooves like fists, attacking anyone who came near its master.

  Isaiah was smiling, an exquisite fallen angel with obsidian eyes so full of manic joy they seemed lit from within. The poet could imagine sooty wings sprouting from the muscular back and demons jockeying for position at his boot heels. His movements were fluid, graceful, and lethal. Somehow he was evading all the bullets whizzing around him while brandishing a sword in one hand and the reins of the horse and a pistol in the other. Everyone he targeted became a casualty. Three, four, five of Liberty’s defenders who had emerged from their hiding places and gotten too close fell to his blade or his bullets.

  Pablo thought he might vomit.

  The walkie-talkie squawked. Steven’s voice came through the static.

  “I’m going north. I’ll grab the IEDs from the eastern location on the way. Dani, Sam, Pablo, you know what to do here.”

  Not only had Steven forgotten to use their code words, but he was relinquishing control of the defense of the critical southern barricade when Isaiah was in their very midst.

  Of course there was good reason. Jeffrey was also heading north to fight the flanking threat there. Steven would be with his son, in victory or defeat. The town and its safekeeping were now secondary.

  Pablo decided there might be hope for Steven after all.

  “Get ready,” Amelia said from the backseat, snapping him to attention.

  “Do you see how close Sam is? I can’t detonate yet.”

  He grabbed the walkie-talkie from the passenger seat.

  “Sam, you’re too close to the IED in the red Taurus. Fall back so I can blow it!”

  The golden head vanished from his field of vision. He had no idea what direction it had even gone.

  “Do you see Dani?” Pablo asked Amelia, yelling to be heard over the gunfire which exploded nonstop from multiple directions. He watched as a handful of invaders breached the razor wire stringing outward from the barricade, like tentacles of a junkyard octopus. They scrambled toward him and their town, Dermestid beetles scuttling to a freshly-dead body. Just a handful though...not hundreds nor even dozens. How many had fallen to the Punji traps? How many more were coming? He needed to maximize the IEDs, making sure they killed as many attackers as possible, because the rest would have to be dealt with in a more hands-on fashion.

  “No. Wait, yes. She’s at your eleven o’clock.”

  “That’s too close!”

  “Pablo, you have your orders. Think of Maddie and all the others in the basement. Do what needs to be done.” Amelia’s voice was emotionless.

  He nodded. She was right.

  The moment before he hit the first detonator button, he saw Dani’s lithe form leap onto the black stallion behind their would-be conqueror.

  Still too close...

  He pressed the red button.

  ###

  Dani held the K-Bar to Isaiah’s throat. The Friesian was agitated by the unfamiliar weight of the stranger on its back, but wasn’t panicking...yet. Isaiah’s firm hand on the reins seemed to keep the massive animal from bolting away from the rattle-pop of gunfire, the oppressive stench of spilt blood and bowels letting loose in terror or death, and the incessant screams of humans and horses.

  Dani blocked all that stimuli from conscious thought to focus on the task at hand.

  The explosion happened the next moment, almost knocking her off the huge beast when it reared up in fright. While ash, gravel, and chunks of red steel rained down on them, she held firm to Isaiah’s waist with one arm. With the other she gripped the knife, never allowing it to budge from the muscled throat of her nemesis.

  “Are you ready to die now?” she murmured into his ear like a lover.

  For once, he had no glib response. Instead, he released the sword he held in his right hand, letting it fall to the ground. The pistol dropped from the other hand the next moment. Both arms extended skyward, holding only the horse’s reins now. All weapons had been relinquished.

  This was not the reaction she expected.

  “No, I surrender. I’m your willing captive, and it would be in violation of all honorable warfare conduct to harm a prisoner. You there,” he yelled, pointing to a Liberty defender who was rounding the corner of the feed store where Dani had just been. The man’s sudden sliding stop and his shocked expression were almost comical. He forgot to point his gun at the man on the horse.

  “Be my witness! I’m surrendering myself to you, but this woman wants to cut my throat. I’m unarmed! Do you see? I’m going to dismount now. See that this creature doesn’t harm the most valuable prisoner you’ll capture today! Don’t let her steal your glory!”

  Incredibly, the man’s gun swiveled up to point at Dani rather than Isaiah, as he slid out of the saddle with his arms still raised in supplication.

  Isaiah stood next to the horse now, wearing a shark’s grin. The leather reins were still held loosely with one upraised hand.

  What kind of bullshit is this?

  With the instinct of a ferret anticipating the cobra’s strike, Dani sensed Isaiah’s next move just before it happened: he was going to jerk the reins, causing the horse to make a sudden move and disrupt the barely controlled situation. That split second was all she needed to deliver a perfect Taekwondo side kick to his skull from atop the stallion.

  The next moment she stood next to his unconscious body on the ground, while chaos continued all around her.

  ###

  Tung knew how to build a bomb. The roof of the red Taurus convulsed a half second before it exploded in all directions, hurling chunks of metallic flesh in a rough circular pattern twenty yards in diameter. The shrapnel placed inside the vehicle was devastating. The broken glass and jagged rocks cut through the scuttling soldiers like they had been flung from the invisible hand of an angry god.

  Pablo let out an involuntary cheer, but the next moment it stuck in his throat.

  More invaders still scrambled around the barricade, part of which had been destroyed by the first bomb, allowing them easier access now.

  “Pablo, get ready.” Amelia’s voice was calm. She might have been telling him to rinse out his coffee mug.

  The second IED was planted on the other side of the road in an ancient pickup truck, ten yards closer to Pablo’s Toyota than the red Taurus had been. If the invaders got too close, he would hand the detonator to Amelia and make use of his allotment of ammunition. The driver’s window was all the way down now and the stock of his shotgun rested doglike in his lap, the business end placed on the rearview mirror. The Toyota was not a cam
ouflaged position. If the attackers got close, Pablo and Amelia would be seen.

  His finger hovered over the detonator’s second button. “Just a little closer...” he muttered.

  The walkie-talkie squawked again. Steven’s voice.

  “Zeta, get ready. Here they come.”

  With the driver’s window all the way down now, Pablo clearly heard the sound of two explosions in quick succession coming from the north, then rapid gunfire that sounded like children’s air rifles from so far away. Pablo knew the northern barricade must hold even though less time and energy had been spent on the fortifications there; there was no way the southern defenders could fight a threat coming from in front as well as behind.

  More figures were approaching the Toyota now through the dust and smoke. He could discern features, expressions. Rather than sinister, they appeared terrified. Their movements also seemed strange...evasive and reckless somehow; not aggressive. There was one man and three women. One of the women was holding her arms up and yelling something.

  Sanctuary?

  Was this a trick? Something wasn’t right, but in those fleeting moments, there wasn’t time to figure out what it was.

  He thought of Maddie and the baby.

  When the crouching, huddling group was five feet from the rusted pickup, Pablo pressed the second button.

  From this IED’s location closer to the Toyota, he felt the invisible force of the blast in the airwaves. A piece of rusted tailgate soared fifty feet into the air next to a severed hand. Everything on the ground was obscured now by the aftermath of the explosion; a dusty, screaming, writhing miasma of confusion and pain and smoke. He had no idea how many people had been killed or injured in the blast, nor if the casualties were limited to only the invaders.

  There wasn’t time to ponder such questions, because more figures were beginning to emerge from the fog of war even now, and there was one final red button to press.

  His hand floated above it. He was relieved to see that his finger barely shook at all.