by Geo Dell
The time played out for a few seconds, both sides waiting for the other side to lower their weapons first. Finally, the young woman stepped forward, past the two men, holstered her own weapon, and then turned to face the young man in the military fatigues.
“We aren’t looking for any trouble,” she said.
It seemed unclear to Bob who she was talking to, them or the guy with the reflective glasses.
“They aren’t either,” she continued, and it became clear she was talking to the young man and not them.
Bob’s finger slid a little closer to the trigger. He waited.
The man tilted his head toward the woman who stood before him. It was impossible to see what his eyes were saying. He didn’t speak aloud, and for all Bob knew he may not actually have even been looking at the woman at all. He may have never taken his eyes off them, only tilted his head to make them think he had.
The face moved slightly again, as if he was looking back toward Tom and the others: Moved again as though he were looking back at the woman once more.
“Jesus,” Bob said under his breath. “It’s like he doesn’t want to.”
“Tim, Nell, Lilly… Get back to the edge of the building… Now,” Tom whispered loudly. “Stay there. If anything happens, hit those trucks and light out.”
The head moved slightly once more. Coming back in their direction again. Maybe he’d seen the movements behind them as the three moved back around the building as Tom had told them to, Bob thought.
“Sin,” the woman said.
Sin, Bob thought. What…? Was that a name, he wondered to himself. The man's name?
“They said they don’t want any trouble,” The woman repeated.
“I fucking heard them,” the military man growled softly.
He seemed to deliberate. His head turned back towards them and he spoke. “Where did the others go?”
“Back around the corner. You look a little shaky to me,” Tom said truthfully. “I sent them out of it. We don’t want any trouble… Seems like you don’t want to believe that.”
“Didn’t say I did, didn’t say I didn’t,” The young man said. His rifle stayed steady, which forced Tom and Bob to hold their own weapons steady.
“Jesus,” the woman said. “Nobody wants trouble. Nobody…”
The young man's face shifted slightly back toward the woman once more. The nose of his rifle jerked.
“Jesus, Bob,” Tom started.
The young man's rifle swung quickly and Tom saw the young woman’s jacket puff outwards from her back and watched a hole appear just below her shoulder before he actually heard the shot. A split second later the young man spun hard to his left stumbled backwards, and then collapsed to the pavement. Bob stepped forward, his rifle still tightly held against his shoulder, walking forward, and sighting on the other young man as he walked.
“Drop it, Son, or I’ll put you down the same way I put down your friend there,” Bob told him in a deep, authoritative voice.
Tom stepped away from Bob, his own rifle up and aiming at the young man. The woman who had been shot slumped to the ground. One hand clutching at the hole in her upper chest. A low moan of pain escaped her mouth.
The second young man looked as though he might do anything.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Son. There isn’t a reason to get yourself hurt. After all this, there’s been enough hurt,” Bob said reasonably.
“I didn’t know he was going to do that,” the young man said. He looked down at the crumpled body. “I didn’t know.”
“Nobody’s saying you did,” Bob said calmly. “Isn’t your fault. Just point that gun at the ground… Set it down. Don’t need anybody else to get hurt, right Son?”
The guy nodded slightly, looked around like he was surprised to see that both of the women behind him were still holding their weapons, although they were both pointed at the ground. He finally realized how it might look to the man with the rifle. Sin was crazy, he told himself... Had been crazy. Sin was dead now. Crazy didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was that Sin was dead. He was laid out on the ground, blood leaking from his mouth. His breath caught in his throat, a sob tearing from his mouth.
“He was nuts. They’ll tell you that,” he told Bob. He reached forward, leaned over and laid his rifle out carefully on the ground before him. “Nuts,” he said once more. He raised his hands over his head into the air, then thought about it and lowered them to his sides, finally clasping them in front of himself, unsure what to do.
~
When Mike turned into the asphalt area that fronted the cave, he knew that something was wrong. Sandy had one of the two way radios on and was listening intently. Mike reached for his own where it sat on the dashboard, mentally berated himself for not having checked in on it, although there had been no plans to do so, turned it on and listened.
Tom was talking calmly.
“…can’t reach them… Already tried.”
Mike keyed the button, “Tom, it’s Mike, what’s going on?”
“Jesus, Mike. I couldn’t reach you… We got ambushed. None of us got hurt, but we got one guy dead on the other side. A woman they shot looks awfully bad… And I got a guy I don’t trust and don’t know what to do with.”
“You want us there?” Mike asked.
“Yeah… And, hey, Sandy’s a nurse, right?”
“Yeah,” Sandy herself answered.
Mike got out of the truck. Behind him Ronnie, Candace and Patty had switched the other radio on and were listening in.
“Maybe Sandy, you, Candace and Ronnie,” Tom said.
“That’s all of our shooters, Tom…”
“Ah… Yeah…” Tom seemed unsure of what to say.
“Tom, I’ll send Candace, Sandy and Ronnie. That’s our best shooter. I can’t leave this place alone,” Mike told him. Candace nodded at him, he turned and caught Ronnie’s eye who nodded. Patty looked worried, and her eyes slid away from his when he tried to make contact. Sandy was already nodding when he looked her way. “They’re on the way, Tom,” he finished.
He handed Candace the rifle he had been carrying. She hurried into the cave and came back out with her pair of Forty Five caliber pistols. She also came back with something that was advertised as a hunting rifle but looked more like an assault rifle and took a clip. She holstered both of the Forty Fives, tossed Ronnie the assault rifle and set Mike's rifle between the seats in the truck.
Sandy climbed into the back as Ronnie took the front passenger's seat. Tom was speaking on the radio, giving Ronnie directions. Candace was nodding, “I know where that is,” she said. She started the truck, dropped it into reverse and began to back away from the cave.
“Candace,” Mike called. He ran to catch up to her. She leaned partway out the window and he kissed her quickly. “I love you. Be careful,” he told her.
“I love you too,” she told him. “I will.” She took her foot off the brake, backed around in a tight circle and drove quickly away.
Mike and Patty walked to the fire where Jan still stood, radio in her hand, and began to wait.
~
The radio hissed silence for so long that Mike was convinced that they were probably trying to call and something was wrong with the radio. Maybe the batteries were dead… Something… Maybe…
“It hasn’t been that long, Mike,” Patty told him “It just seems that way.”
Mike smiled nervously, “Shows, huh?”
Patty shrugged. “All of us.” She looked over at Jan who continued to re-position slices of Venison on the drying racks. Her mouth was set in a tight grimace as if she was in pain. She looked up as though she had felt Patty’s eyes upon her and nodded. Patty smiled at her and Jan answered it with a smile of her own.
The radio crackled…
“Got them,” Ronnie’s voice called over the radio as the static smoothed out. “Give us a minute or two.”
“Read you,” Patty told him.
“Okay,” Ronnie’s voice came back.
“All of our people are fine. The guy that started the whole thing is dead. You could say he’s not fine at all. There was another guy, but he took off. There are two women and two kids here… Oh, another woman took off… We’re coming back… The one woman’s been shot… Hang on a minute…” The radio switched back to choppy static then came back.
“Okay… We’ll talk about the rest when we get there… Uh, those other two aren’t armed… We don’t know where they went…”
The radio switched back to static.
“Be careful,” Mike told him.
“Oh yeah,” Ronnie came back. “Oh yeah.” He clicked off.
~
The three waited silently by the smoky fire. None seemed able to meet the others' eyes. They were all worried about the same thing. Where were those other two? Those trucks could be sitting ducks if they were out waiting to shoot them up on their way back, running loose and still wanting a fight. But each of them knew there was nothing they could do but wait.
A half hour later, the lead Suburban pulled onto the pavement in front of the cave, cut a wide circle and parked nose out. The other vehicles pulled in and parked to one side of each other. Everyone climbed out of the trucks and gathered in front of the cave.
Patty walked over to Ronnie and kissed him. Bob went to Jan by the fire, who only now seemed unable to hold back her tears, and pulled her into himself holding her tight. His own eyes seemed red and troubled.
One young woman and two small children stood off to one side. Sandy walked slowly up to Mike.
“The other one didn’t make it. I didn’t want to leave her there. She’s in the back of the Suburban,” Sandy finished. She had blood smeared across the front of her white nylon windbreaker and soaked into one leg of her jeans.
“All right,” Mike told her. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah… Pissed off, but okay.” Sandy answered.
Mike nodded and slipped his arm around Candace as she walked over to him, drew her to him and kissed her.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
She looked at him.
“For coming back safely,” he said quietly.
She hugged him back. Tom walked over. “We could take her out to Huntingtonville,” he said.
“No… I think that’s a bad idea,” Mike said. “We’ve got to talk this out.” He raised his voice so everyone could hear him.
“Listen... If we’ve got people willing to kill us, we’ve got to take this a lot slower. We’ve got to sit down and talk this all out, talk it over, make some new rules.” He nodded his head. There were several murmurs of assent.
“Ronnie, help me,” Mike asked.
He and Ronnie walked into the cave and came back carrying a zippered sleeping bag. They opened the rear of the suburban and carefully zippered the still warm body into the bag.
“We have anybody who knows something to say?” he asked.` His voice was choked with emotion.
“I’ll say something,” Lilly said. Mike nodded to her. He and Ronnie carried the zippered bag over to the edge of the broken pavement. The brown water roared past several feet below.
Lilly wore a serious face. She closed her eyes; her lips moved silently for a moment, and then she began to pray.
“Lord… Jesus, be with us. This body may not know you, but I know that you know her. Her name is Emma.” Lilly then recited the Lord's prayer with nearly everyone joining in.
Mike and Ronnie picked up the sleeping bag carefully, reverently, and as gracefully as they could, swung it outward toward the river so it would land in the fast flowing water and not tumble down the cliff face instead and let go. The current grabbed it, and it quickly sank out of sight.
Tom, Patty, Janet and Nell began to gather things for a meal. Candace walked Mike over to the two children and the young woman.
As the young woman looked up at Mike's approach, he realized that she was not much more than a child herself, a young girl closer to Tim’s age. She had a hard, worried set to her face that made her appear much older than she really was.
“Annie,” Candace said, “This is Mike. Mike, Annie.”
Mike nodded. “Ann, nice to meet you,” Mike said. “You okay?”
“Yes, sir,” She answered.
“Just Mike,” Mike told her.
She smiled. “Just Annie, “she told him.
“Annie it is,” Mike agreed.
She remained grim, but the smile played around the edges of her mouth.
“This is Brian and Janelle,” Annie told him.
The little boy had large round eyes and a shock of thick blonde hair. The little girl had light brown skin and dark brown, nearly black hair. They both looked up at him with serious expressions on their faces.
“Sin shooted Miss Bev,” The little boy said seriously. The little girl nodded her head solemnly.
Mike nodded back. “I’m sorry for that, but there isn’t anyone here to hurt anyone now.” He squatted down on one knee, eye level to the children. “It’s okay now. No one can hurt you here, okay?”
They both looked quietly around, then nodded slightly but didn’t say anything else.
“Ann. Annie?” Mike asked. The young girl raised her too serious eyes to his own. “If you want to, you can take them inside the cave. It’s warmer in there. You can get some sleeping bags, make a place to sleep. Candace will show you where everything is, okay?”
“Yes, Sss... Mike,” Annie said. She smiled like she wasn’t used to smiling at all. She took the little girl's hand as Candace took the little boy's hand. Her free hand slipped easily into Candace’s free hand and they walked off into the cave, talking low as they went.
~ Evening ~
Dinner was eaten without a great deal of enthusiasm. No one found themselves too far away from their weapons. Mike made a point of talking to everyone during the meal, just a few words to see how they were doing, what was on their minds, or at least the most pressing thing on their minds.
Everyone was concerned about what could happen next. Two people had run off. Yes, they had set their weapons down, but there were weapons everywhere that they could pick up any time they wanted, weapons much nastier than the ex-GI who called himself Sin had gotten for them.
Mike had looked the two rifles over. They were both the same. A carbine that held a fifty round clip and was either semi or fully automatic with the slide of a small button. If the first guy hadn’t gone right down, he could have cut down Tom, Bob and the others easily. The second guy had laid his rifle down without firing a shot. What if it hadn’t gone that way? What if it didn’t go that way the next time? Those were the questions that mattered to everyone.
The second man and the woman had turned and run. Tom had berated himself for not stopping them, but as everyone had pointed out to him during the evening, what could he have done? Shoot them? Certainly that was not an option. But then Tom had said what was on everyone’s mind. What if they came back? What if they came back with Machine guns? Hand grenades? Or even, what they had the first time which were really very close to personal machine guns anyway, as far as Tom was concerned. Knowing that, and Tom had thought about most of that as they had suddenly bolted, but knowing all of that, that he or one of them may very well have to deal with those same two people again in the future, shouldn’t he have shot... To kill? To maim?
No one had answered at first when Tom had tossed his own doubts out and asked, but Mike had been about to. Before he could, Patty had spoken up.
“That’s a maybe, not a fact, not an absolute. And you can’t see the future. Maybe, maybe, someday we’ll have to deal with them. That doesn’t make killing them an option, doesn’t make it right. I mean, I’m scared too. They could come after us. Do they know where we are? But,” she lowered her voice which had risen with her passion, “It’s only fear. They might, they might not. If they do, I’ll shoot to kill. But until they do…
Do something… I couldn’t,” she finished.
Mike had let the conversations run their course
s and nearly everyone had had something to contribute. But it became apparent that after dinner was over they were going to have to discuss it more fully, decide what they wanted to do about the situation, what the group wanted to do.
Mike looked around. The sun was setting slowly in the North East. The day had been a long one with nothing settled yet. The trucks had been unloaded and the supplies carried inside the cave. The back of the Suburban had been cleaned up. Dinner was over. The dog, which was still lacking a name as far as Mike knew, was nosing around playfully with the two children, wagging his tail. The children were smiling, coming out of themselves already. Mike was surprised, but happily so. The chill of the night was moving in on the air that rose from the river and flowed across the asphalt and dirt at the front of the cave.
“Why don’t we take this inside?” Mike said at last. “We’ll all get comfortable and figure out what to do, how we want to handle this.” It seemed that everyone had been waiting for that announcement. Within just a few minutes everyone was picking up items and heading into the cave out of the growing darkness.
Mike watched the two children laughing as they ran into the cave with their newest friend close at their heels, tail thumping against their legs. Mike looked over to where Annie walked with Patty and Candace. She was smiling also, in spite of the day. In spite of the heaviness of his spirit, he felt a smile rise to his own face. He hurried to catch up to Candace and the others, walking into the cave with them.
~
Tom went first. It was obvious to everyone that he blamed himself for letting the two run off, but it was also clear that no one - some after hearing what Tom had to say, some after giving it more thought - had placed the blame on Tom, except Tom himself.
Janet Dove went on for quite some time about it in an obvious attempt to cheer Tom up, but that didn’t look to be possible, Mike thought. Then Nell spoke, relating what the woman who had been shot had told her before she had died.
“She told me he had been stationed at the base, but he’d been A.W.O.L. for quite some time before things went bad. No one knew his real name; he went by the handle Sin. The other guy, the one that ran off, called himself Death. It was some sort of private joke between the two of them,” Nell grimaced, as if to say she saw no joke, private or otherwise. “No one knew whether they had served together or only ran into each other once things got bad. But they had both been soldiers, and they decided to walk back out to the base for weapons.”
