by Hunt, James
James held up his hand, and Nolan grew quiet. The floor was shifting beneath his feet and he leaned up against the wall to keep himself upright. He shut his eyes, shaking his head. “How far along?”
“Around eight weeks,” Nolan answered.
“Eight weeks.” James repeated the words to make sure they were real. He turned back to the doctor. “She didn’t tell me. Why wouldn’t she tell me?” James stepped back into the house, needing to find a chair before he collapsed.
James returned to the kitchen and sat down at the table. He shut his eyes and massaged his temples.
“James,” Nolan said, appearing nearby. “I’m sure she had her reasons.”
James rubbed his eyes and then lowered his hands from his face. When she had been pregnant with Jake, she told him the moment she found out. It was one of the happiest moments of their lives.
“It’s not use going down the rabbit hole,” Nolan said. “There will be plenty of time for that later.” He joined James at the table. “Right now you need to start thinking long term.”
James frowned. “I know that. We have enough—”
“Yes, yes, yes, you have food and water and medicine and land,” Nolan said, rolling his hands forward in a swirling motion as he spoke. “But people are going to come to collect what you have.”
“We have contingencies for that—”
“Not for what I’m talking about, you don’t,” Nolan said. “You’re going to have to make a choice, James. A hard choice. People just weren’t prepared for what happened.”
James narrowed his eyes and then tilted his head to the side. “Nolan, I don’t think—”
“Just let me finish.” Nolan held up his hands, nodding quickly. “You have more than enough space for RVs and tents, even with all of the cattle. You have a chance to do something really special here, whether you realize or not.” He lowered his hands, drawing in a deep breath that he exhaled, his shoulders slumping with him. “But this is your land. And I’m grateful and thankful for what you’ve done for me. But all of those people in town aren’t bad folks. They just… weren’t ready.” He clapped James on the shoulder. “Take some time and think on it, okay?”
James nodded and Nolan headed to bed, leaving him alone at the table to contemplate.
Deep down he knew that there would be people who would come knocking on his door when things finally turned bad. But bringing on more people also meant bringing on more personalities, and people who he didn’t know or understand.
Trust was important to James, because without trust, things fell apart. It was one of the reasons that the ranch had survived as long as it did. He trusted Nolan, and while he hadn’t known her for very long, he was beginning to trust Zi.
But letting in more people also ran the risk of letting in more folks like Maya and Stevie. People who were so willing to rip his family off and steal from them even after James had pulled them out of the burning city and brought them into his home.
James checked the pocket watch and saw that it was a few hours before dawn. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, so he walked back inside the house and into the kitchen, stepping slowly and carefully as the old house liked to alert those that slept to movement.
It was quiet in the house, as it was every morning when he woke to start his day. It was a time for him to reflect, and with everything that happened in the past twenty-four hours, he had plenty to reflect on.
Lost in thought, the quiet Texas morning was shattered with the sound of a gunshot that echoed from the front yard. A gunshot that was triggered from the trip wires that had been set up to detect intruders.
25
By the time the second gunshot sounded, James had already flicked on the spotlights on top of the house. Light flooded the front yard, exposing the intruders.
James picked up his rifle from the kitchen and then opened the front door, firing at the fleeing enemy that was disoriented from the trip wires and lights. The five-man team split in half, three right, two left, both groups moving toward the back of the house.
James chased them with the rifle, dropping one on the right before the rest made it around the house, and he sprinted back through the kitchen, ducking just in time before a bullet shattered the windows.
Luis was the first one up, crouching low as he found James in the kitchen. “How many?”
“Five,” James answered. “But I’ve already got one.”
Glass shattered, and James saw the backyard darken as the enemy shot the roof spotlights.
“Get Mary and Jake into the hole!” James shouted, then fired into the backyard.
Zi was out next and joined James on the floor with the weapon that he’d given her earlier in the day.
More spotlights were shot out, but James managed to see a few of them within range of the buried mortars. It was now or never. He reached for the switches in the kitchen and braced himself. “Fire in the hole!”
James turned away from the back door as he flipped the switches, the explosions shaking the house’s foundation.
His ears rang with a high-pitched din long after the explosions had finished, and he couldn’t tell if the enemy outside had stopped firing or if he had just gone deaf.
Knowing that he wouldn’t have much time, James stood, leaving Zi on the kitchen floor as he marched out into the darkness, searching for what remained of the enemy.
Movement to James’s right caught his attention, and he pivoted, aiming at the silhouette on the ground. He fired, and the body suddenly fell still. With his ears still ringing, James neither heard the shadow’s final cries or the gunshot that ended his life.
But as the ringing in James’s ears subsided, it was slowly replaced with the gurgling moans of the enemy scrambling to their feet and trying to flee in the darkness.
James brought another one of them in his crosshairs and fired, dropping the man to the ground, who cried out in agony.
Only two remained.
The explosions from the mortars had upended the earth around the house, leaving the home on a tiny island of untouched land.
After a thorough sweep of the perimeter, James found one of the final two survivors, barely clinging to life as he crawled along the ground, blood spurting from a shrapnel wound on the back of his leg. James flipped him to his back, shoving the barrel of the gun into his face.
James ripped the terrorist’s bandana down, unable to hide the surprise on his face as he saw that the man that had attacked him was American.
“Who are you?” James asked.
The terrorists wheezed labored breaths, even after lying still for some time. He shook his head, wincing in pain. “You cannot stop what we have started. It is the end of everything you love and everything that you took for granted.”
James grimaced and then pressed his boot heel into the man’s wound, causing the man to cry out in pain. He continued to apply pressure until the screams stopped, and the terrorist could only gasp in silence until James eased the pressure.
“Why did you come here?” James asked, repeating the question with fervor and haste.
“You killed our people,” he said, sucking deep breaths between every few words, as if he were starved for oxygen. “And now we’re here to kill yours.”
“That didn’t work out the way that you wanted it to now, did it?” Luis walked to the terrorist’s head and aimed the rifle down at his face, his finger on the trigger.
Despite the fatigue and the pain from the gunshot wound, the terrorist laughed through choking coughs and sobs. “You will all die. Your family. Your friends. We will burn you all to the ground.” He widened his eyes with madness and the cackling grew more violent. “We will cleanse you with the fires of hell!”
James had never considered himself a violent man, nor was he vengeful, but there was something about that man’s laugh and the conviction in which he spoke that broke something loose in him, and he aimed the rifle at the man’s face and pulled the trigger.
In the
blink of an eye, the traitor’s cackling ended, and James couldn’t pull his eyes away from the gory hole of blood and brains that used to be the man’s face. The force of the bullet caved the man’s face inward, the deepest parts between the eyes where James had aimed the rifle when he squeezed the trigger.
The body jolted only once after James ended the man’s life, and staring at the lifeless body, James felt something shift inside of him.
James had grown up hunting. He’d killed deer, hog, even butchered his own cattle. But since yesterday, he’d found himself hunting a different kind of beast, one that was far deadlier than any animal he’d hunted before.
“Dad?”
James spun around, his heart skipping a beat as he saw his own son staring down at the dead man. Both James and Jake were frozen, and it was Luis who came up from behind, guiding the boy away from the sight of the dead man.
“Go back inside, Jake,” Luis said, giving Jake a shove toward the house. “Check on your mom. Make sure she’s all right.”
Jake followed Luis’s direction but continued to look back at the body and his father, stumbling in a dream-like state toward the house, leaving James to wonder what his son saw and how he would explain what he had done.
Once the boy was out of earshot, Luis grabbed James’s arm. He was saying something, but James couldn’t hear him.
“What?” James asked.
“The bodies,” Luis answered. “Once morning hits, they’re going to roast faster than a pig on a spit. We can’t leave them out here like that. It won’t be sanitary. And I don’t think that’s something people will want to see with their morning oatmeal.”
James nodded. “We’ll bury them. Mass grave. I have some limestone we can put down.” He took a step toward the barn, but Luis stopped him, pulling him back.
“You did what you had to do,” Luis said. “We couldn’t keep a hostage, and if we let him go, then he would have stumbled back toward the town and given them a rundown of everything we had here. You didn’t have a choice, James. Remember that.”
James nodded, and the pair of men walked back toward the barn in silence. James’s mind was wild with worry, because he didn’t think the men who came here tonight was the end of their confrontation. Plus, he saw a five-man team. And he only counted four bodies.
26
The first golden rays of dawn broke the darkness of night, and James planted the shovel into the dirt, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his gloved hand, smearing more soot on his face as Luis added the final pile of dirt to the mass grave.
James had found Stevie and Maya’s bodies on his search for the fifth man. Their throats had been sliced. At first he wanted to throw them in the grave with the others, but he buried them separately.
The night had been warm, but with the sun rising that heat was amplified, and it would only get hotter as the day grew longer.
“Good riddance to bad eggs.” Luis planted his shovel in the dirt next to James, both men staring at the mound of dirt in silence before Luis couldn’t take the quiet anymore. “You think they’ll send more of them?”
James nodded. “But I don’t know if we can fight them off again. They didn’t use any of the heavy artillery we saw in the town. They underestimated us. If they come back, they won’t make that mistake again.”
Luis crossed his arms. “Well, I don’t suppose that means we’ll be enjoying a day off.”
“Afraid not.” James picked up his shovel from the dirt, and Luis did the same. “We’ll need to reinforce the house, set more trip wires, mortars.” He turned and glanced out toward the grave, looking past it to the bunker out in the distance. He faced forward again, the pair of men walking the same stride and picking up steam. “Jake and Zi will be able to help with some of the repairs, but I’ll need you to take care of the duties on the ranch.”
“You think the rest of the hands will come in this morning?” Luis asked.
James had hoped that they would show up, but he wasn’t going to bank on it.
“I don’t know,” James answered.
Exhausted by the time they returned the house, James and Luis stepped into the back, finding Zi with Jake in the kitchen, both of them wide awake as if they’d never gone back to sleep. Which they probably hadn’t.
“Hey, there are a bunch of people here,” Zi said, looking concerned. “They’re out front.”
“I’ll go and get them started,” Luis said.
Zi lingered in the kitchen after Luis left. “What do you want me to do?”
James finally cleared his throat. “Go help Luis. He’ll give you a rundown of some of the chores. Thanks, Zi.”
Zi nodded, whispering something into Jake’s ear before she disappeared.
With James and Jake alone, the pair of Bowers men lingered in silence, neither looking at one another, neither sure of what they should say.
But James knew that the silence would only make things worse the longer it went. “Have you checked on your mother?”
“Nolan is with her,” Jake answered. “She’s still sleeping.”
James gestured inside and guided his son to the kitchen table, illuminated by the sun shining brightly through the broken window.
“I know you saw some things last night,” James said once Jake finally took his seat on the opposite side of the table. “Things that I want to explain—”
“You killed him,” Jake said, his eyes staring at some point on the wooden table, his expression stoic. “I know why you did it. And I understand.” He raised his eyes to meet his father. “You did it to protect us. You didn’t have a choice.”
The answer should have made James feel better, but it sounded rehearsed. Jake spoke as if he wrestled with what to say all night, and this was the rational explanation of why he saw his father murder someone in their back yard.
“You’re right,” James said. “I was justified in killing those men, because they came here to kill all of us.” James grabbed his son’s hand. “But killing is a choice. No matter the circumstance. And it’s the hardest choice you could ever make. And it should never be taken lightly. Death affects everyone involved.”
Jake nodded, remaining silent, and then he slowly slid off the chair and walked around the table to James and hugged his father. “I understand.”
James kissed the top of Jake’s head. “Why don’t you get breakfast ready for the troops?”
Jake nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Once Jake was off to get the food started, James gathered the courage for what came next and chose to go ahead and hurry down the hall to Mary’s room before he allowed his own doubts to make the trip harder than it was in reality.
James paused at the door, watching Nolan at Mary’s bedside.
“You can come in, James,” Nolan said, his back still to the door, finishing up his examination.
James stepped inside, the wood groaning from his weight, and walked to the other side of the bed, reaching for his wife’s hand.
Mary’s face had grown paler, and her skin was ice cold. James engulfed her hand with his, hoping that his body heat would warm her. “How is she?”
Nolan finally removed his stethoscope from his neck and let it dangle precariously from his shoulders as he pocketed his hands, still wearing that white overcoat that he’d been taken hostage in. It was dirty with blotches of blood on it. Mary’s blood. “She’s fighting it.”
After everything James had experienced, he was in no mood for guessing games. “Just give it to me straight, Nolan.”
Nolan nodded and then drew in a big breath that raised his shoulders high and then down low again with the exhale. “She’s not healing like she should. I was hoping that the antibiotics in the IV would have helped keep her afloat, but her vitals continue to decline, which could be a sign of internal bleeding. But without any x-rays or MRIs, I can’t be certain.”
James gently massaged Mary’s hand, wondering if she could feel his touch in the deep unconscious state of her mind, knowing that No
lan was right. She wasn’t a quitter. Never had been. But as tough and strong as she was, this might be more than she could handle.
“How long until we know for sure?” James asked.
Nolan rocked his head from side to side. “If it is internal bleeding, then she’ll be gone by tomorrow morning. If it’s an infection, the stronger antibiotic should help give her a fighting chance.” Nolan finally looked up from Mary and at James. “Of all the people for this to have happened to, it’s terrible that Mary should have gone through this.” Nolan touched James’s shoulder. “I’m very sorry, James.”
“Me too,” James said.
Nolan left the room, leaving James to think on everything that had happened, all they had gone through. Had he not prepared enough? Had he tried to help too many people? Perhaps. Or maybe he had lost sight of what was truly important.
James gently placed his hand over Mary’s stomach and closed his eyes. He whispered a prayer, sending his hope to God with the humility of a man who needed help but felt ashamed to ask for it.
27
With one hand on the wheel and the second on the wound over his shoulder, Emmanuel struggled to stop the blood loss and keep the Humvee from crashing off the road. The old vehicle was a bear to handle with two hands, and only having one to maneuver made any sudden movements out of the question. If something stepped in front of Emmanuel’s path now, it would die.
Blood continued to seep through the wound even though Emmanuel applied firm pressure. He was the last of five. Five fighters against one fucking farmer. He snarled at the thought and hoped he would be able to get stitched up and be a part of the second raiding party that returned and wiped the bastards off the face of the earth.
But the longer Emmanuel thought about the next move, the more he dreaded his return to the town. Because he knew what could be waiting for him on the way back.
