by B. C. Tweedt
“…Governor Steve Reckhemmer!”
The Governor winked at Sam and the curtains swung open, blazing him with a stream of sunlight. He walked into it, smiling and waving.
Sydney was not smiling. Greyson had sent her a dire warning and she had no idea what he meant or who to trust. He’d come get her? Where? If the Secret Service thought it was too dangerous to leave, they certainly wouldn’t let him backstage. He was just going to get himself in trouble. And just when she needed it the most, her phone seemed to have stopped working. Her text reply was being sent, but would not complete. No bars? How could that be?
Sam shared with her a look of concern. Agent Murray had said they couldn’t tell anyone, even his dad. And now he was out on the stage when something was about to happen. He’d never been so scared before.
“Sam, Sydney.” The voice startled them and they turned. Agent Murray was standing over them. “We have to get you out of here. Now’s the time.”
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The mounted officer was trotting closer. The crowd was parting to let him through. A trigger of guilt stabbed at his thoughts, but gripping the slingshot’s handle even harder kept it from stopping him. There was nothing else he could do. He had to do what he had to do to save his friends.
“What’s going on here?” the cop bellowed.
Sorry. I don’t have a choice.
The rubber creaked as he pulled it back, aimed, and snapped forward.
The steel ball pounded the cop’s helmet, knocking him clean off the side of the horse. The eruption of gasps from the crowd gave Greyson just the hesitation he needed to dash to the stirrup and swing himself up and over.
“Yah!”
The horse whinnied and reared up, almost throwing Greyson off backward. Regaining his balance, Greyson stood completely on the stirrups, aimed, and placed his second shot into the man in front of him, being careful to only pull back far enough to stun the man and to place the shot where it wouldn’t do permanent damage. The ball thudded into the man’s abdomen and he collapsed out of the way. The horse landed back on all fours and Greyson kicked its sides. It responded immediately, breaking into a cantor and panicking the crowd. Screams and shouts flooded his ears.
A man made a move on him, arms going for the reigns, but Greyson pulled them away. The horse’s hooves clacked at the concrete as it turned quickly, smacking its haunches into the man and sending him to the ground.
“Yah! Yah!”
Greyson whipped at the reins and heeled him harder, heading back at the Plurbs and the strong man. They were frozen in their tracks.
He had one more shot. Bouncing on the saddle, he tried to hold himself steady, his inner legs burning to do so. He loaded the pocket, pulled it back, and sped past his target.
He released.
Orion ducked just as the ball smashed into a tiki torch behind him, cutting it in two.
Greyson rode on, the crowd parting for him.
Orion sneered, watched the red hat bounce away down the concourse, and looked at his watch. Motioning to the remaining Plurbs, they moved in toward RedHead, who had finally been wrestled to the ground by two bold men.
The Plurbs encircled the adults.
“Let her go. You have thirty seconds.”
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“Where are you taking us?” Sam asked Agent Murray as they followed him down the hall.
“Quiet,” he hushed, turning around to look at them, his eyes always scanning for potential enemies. He leaned closer, concern furrowed on to his brow. “I overheard them. They’re going to try to take you, Sam. But I won’t let them, okay?”
Gulping down a lump in his throat, Sam nodded. After so many months of complaining about having a bodyguard instead of privacy, he finally understood the need.
“We can’t trust anyone, even the other agents. Understand?”
Sydney took in a few deep breaths. Why was Greyson coming here? Why didn’t he trust Agent Murray? It was the other agents he shouldn’t trust!
“Yeah. I understand. Just get us out of here, please.”
“I will,” Agent Murray whispered. “Just follow me, do what I say, and you’ll be fine, little man.”
Gratitude seeped into his heart and he wanted to thank Agent Murray for all he had done, but he was already opening the back door – and he hadn’t saved them yet.
Following the agent outside, the sun’s rays engulfed their eyes in white darkness. Agent Murray grabbed Sam by the hand, letting Sydney follow close behind. Slowly their surroundings came back into view as their eyes adjusted. Three black SUVs were parked halfway on the sidewalks and halfway on the grass. Barricades had been erected further down, keeping any unauthorized personnel from walking through. Three other suited agents stood by the vehicles, hands held in front of them, sunglasses keeping their vision sharpest at all times.
“Agent Murray.”
“Agent Covington.”
Agent Covington eyed the kids behind his sunglasses. He stood in front of the lead vehicle, an imposing, unmoving figure. “What’s going on?”
“I’m taking Sam and his friend Sydney early. He’s not feeling well.”
Agent Covington’s thick neck turned as he looked at Sam. “He looks fine to me.”
Agent Murray grabbed Sam’s shoulder and pulled him close. “It’s a digestive issue. We should probably be getting to a bathroom soon,” he said with a forced laugh.
Covington didn’t budge. “I haven’t been given any authorization yet. You know any of Sam’s movements must go through the governor.”
“The governor is speaking. We can’t interrupt him for something like this. He’ll understand.”
The other two agents took a step forward. Covington and Murray watched them and returned glances. Sydney didn’t want to breathe for fear of setting them all off. Gunfire seemed one wrong word or movement away.
“I can’t let you leave without authorization.”
Agent Murray looked at Sam, and then at Sydney. And then at his watch. “Lie down, Sam. Sydney. We’ll wait here for authorization.”
The agents and two kids were all puzzled.
Remembering what his bodyguard had said about doing what he said, Sam was the first to obey, slowly lowering himself to the grass, pretending to be sick by holding his stomach. Sydney followed, not letting the other agents out of her gaze. What was going on? Why would they lie down when they were trying to escape?
The noise interrupted their thoughts.
Scrreeee! Screeee! Screeee!
One after another, the tiki-torches lining the sidewalk made the sound as a ring of green light shone through the fuel cylinders’ sides.
Scrreeee! Screeee! Screeee! Scrreeee! Screeee! Screeee!
All the agents watched the lights turn on with each squeal, winding their way down the path all the way to the main concourse. All except Agent Murray. He had joined the kids on the ground.
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Scrreeee! Screeee! Screeee! Scrreeee! Screeee! Screeee!
Greyson slowed the horse to a trot as the sounds and lights made their way toward him. The crowd had already been up in arms by his approach, shouting and grabbing kids, but now the piercing sound had captured their attention. The green rings flashed on both sides of the concourse, lighting the path like a runway at dusk. Some in the crowd ‘oooo’ed and ‘ahh’ed, but others just stared, confused.
The panic washed over him. He’d run out of time. They were about to take Sydney. And the torches were about to erupt with whatever they were filled with.
This was it.
“E-everyone. E-everyone!” he screamed, the horror rising from his belly to his throat as he kicked at the horse to go faster. “Get down!”
His horse buzzed between a woman and her child, sending the child screaming. Her face of fear seared itself into Greyson’s mind.
He pulled on the horse’s reins and took a sharp right to avoid a slow-moving family. Up ahead he could see the crowd pushing in to
ward the speech, but the loudspeakers with the governor’s voice had gone silent.
He snapped to the left and the right. There was nowhere to go but around the crowd. The torches were everywhere.
Please be smoke, or fireworks. Please God.
But he had never really believed they were just a distraction.
“G-get down!” he screamed.
He had a sudden urge to get down himself. And then it was too late.
Chapter 18
The fire and heat and earth-shattering bangs erupted one after another, sizzling the ends of his hairs and hurling his body from the horse with a crushing, invisible force. Bodies were flung to the left and right, depending on which side of the concourse they had been on, sending them to the ground beneath the balls of fire which bellowed from the torches like an ocean of red and yellow spreading above them, churning and crackling the air with searing heat.
He landed with a sharp thud in a tangle of limbs somewhere in the sea of red and black. Tumbling for a moment, he slammed against another body and came to rest, still being jerked around in his swirling mind.
Smoke and ashes enveloped him with their tarry texture, flashing colors of orange, yellow, and red as more flashes erupted around the entire fair. Bangs thudded his chest like he was inside the finale of a fireworks show, but he couldn’t hear anymore – just a high-pitched whine and a whirring silence.
Debris rained down all around him – boards and clothing and fragments of who knows what littering his back. And it kept coming down for several seconds, even after the last blast had echoed in the distance, reverberating and flashing into the sky.
The smoke and vapors wafted over him when he first dared to open his eyes, and he was not prepared for the chaos he saw. Bodies closest to the ground were the first to come into view as the clouds of smoke began to swirl; more and more came into view all around him and further down the street. It seemed as if none were moving – a runway full of mounds of clothing and death.
Food huts were on fire to his right and left. The Corn Dog stand was missing half of its side; its ceiling had been blown clean off, flung into the pedestrians behind. Every window of the Grandstands and the Varied Industries Building was broken, the glass blown into the rooms along with flames that ate at draping American flags.
I did this. I let it happen. It’s my fault.
Guilt began to gnaw at his insides, slowly at first, but building and surging to a climax, it filled him. Sorrow pressed at his burning eyes; stinging tears from the smoke and the pain of guilt streamed down his face. His muscles tensed – he wanted to hit something, to smack his head on the pavement or to tear his clothes – anything to get the anger out.
He had allowed this to happen. And everyone had died.
“Help!”
The cry was soft. But someone was alive.
Slowly at first, but growing to crescendo came the screams. Muffled through Greyson’s half-deaf ears, they came from every direction, and he realized that everyone was not dead. The mounds of clothing shifted and rolled; few could stand, but those who could began pulling at one mound or another.
Get up, Greyson, he told himself. Get up and help. Fix what you did.
He pushed at the concrete and realized it was hot. His back felt steaming as well, his shirt sticking to his back and pulling at the scab from his knife wound. Ignoring the pain, he rose to his hands and knees and coughed at the smoke. He could barely see, the smoke was so thick. The screams were all around him, but still muffled behind the incessant ringing in his ears; faintly at first, he began to hear the fires crackling from the direction where the smoke was orange and red.
His horse whinnied and danced in the middle of the street, and Greyson stood to calm it down before it trampled anyone. His vision swirled, his mind dizzy, but he shook it off, wiping at his tearing eyes.
“Whoa, boy!” he said, but it sounded like someone else had said the words. “Whoa.”
He made his way to the horse and grabbed its reins, but it wouldn’t calm down. Perhaps, being a trained police horse, it knew it had a mission, or perhaps it was too frightened. Either way, it got its message across. He had to go.
“Okay, boy,” he said with a hoarse, wavering voice through his tears. “Hold on.”
He grabbed the saddle, found the stirrup, and launched himself up, swimming through the smoke. Coughing and hacking for oxygen as the smoke burned his throat, he scanned the heaps of bodies helping each other up – some blackened and burned from the blast, others bloodied by shrapnel. There were so many to help. He wanted to help them all, but he couldn’t. He needed to help one above all others.
“I’m sorry!” he yelled into the crowd, his voice cracking as the guilt tore at his soul.
I allowed this to happen. I could have warned them all.
He turned the horse toward Riley Stage and kicked.
“I’m sorry!” he cried again.
He disappeared through a cloud of grey smoke, black tears streaking across his cheeks.
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Kip lifted the curtain an inch and peered out the window of the camper where he’d found refuge. Across the road, the man he’d shot in the back of his bulletproof vest sneaked from one RV to the next, checking the windows. Frightened neighbors were shouting from the other direction as another enemy scoured the campground for him. Others were outside their RVs, peering at the rising black smoke coming from the fairgrounds, thinking there must have been quite a pyrotechnics display they hadn’t heard about.
Despite the despair the sound of explosions had sent washing over him, Kip had to focus. He switched his pistol’s magazine with a fully loaded one and pulled back the slide to chamber a round. Checking the window again, he knew he’d have to create a distraction. Hopefully Gloria was long gone by now, but he had to keep them occupied.
He burst from the front door and fired three shots into the man across the street. Two found his legs and the third found his head as he lay crippled.
Before the other man could join the fight, Kip swung around the edge of the camper and put his back to it. The second man stepped into the yard area and aimed his rifle at the door still swinging in the wind.
Listening to the man’s footfalls, Kip waited, the dry grass crunching as the man ran to the door and swung it open.
Breathing silently, Kip continued to wait outside, just below the window. He put a hand to the hitch below him and felt the movement of the RV as the man searched. The hitch shifted toward the front, and he could feel the footfalls creaking nearer the window.
When the footfalls stopped, he raised his gun to the window and put two bullets through the same inch of space he had peeked through earlier. A body collapsed to the RV’s floor.
More screams pierced the new silence – likely from all the gunfire – but one was Gloria’s. He’d only heard her scream once before, but it had stuck in his memory. And here it was again.
“Gloria?” He ran to the center of the dirt street and craned his neck left and right. “Gloria!”
“Help! Kip!”
He followed the direction of the sound to the top of the hill. After one last backward look toward the fair and toward Greyson, he raised his weapon and strode toward Gloria’s voice.
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The explosions had sent fire and an SUV over Sydney and Sam’s heads. The massive vehicle had smashed against the door behind them, caving in the wall and blocking the back entrance to the stage. Another SUV had skidded into one of the agents and crushed him beneath as it rolled out of view. The other two agents had been knocked to the ground by the concussion and grasped at the ground, disoriented.
Agent Murray was the first to his feet. Holding his sleeve against his mouth to cover the smoke, he walked over to Agent Covington, pulled out his pistol, and put two bullets into his head.
Sydney watched in disbelief as he shot the other agent just before he could raise his own gun. She looked to Sam who shared her horror.
“
Come on!” Agent Murray shouted to them, pointing at the remaining SUV, which must have been far enough away from the explosive torches to still be standing. “We have to go. They’re after you!”
Sam scrambled to his feet, but Sydney was slower to rise.
“Wait,” Sydney muttered as she scrambled after him.
Sam turned and motioned her on as Agent Murray opened the door for them. “Hurry!”
Sydney wanted to warn him right then, but she knew it wouldn’t work. She had to try something else. “Ow!” Falling to her hands and knees, she embellished the pain. “Help!”
Sam stopped and reversed, heading toward her. “You okay?” He bent down to pick her up.
“I’m fine,” she whispered, pulling him closer and whispering quiet and fast. “He knew about the bombs. If you get in the car, you’re gone. Trust me.”
Sam held her arms, staring at her in disbelief. His hair was disheveled from the blast, and smoke had made his eyes red and watery. But after a few moments of doubt, a glimmer of courage sparkled in them. “O-okay.”
Agent Murray shouted, “Come on! NOW!”
“Follow me,” Sydney whispered.
And with that, she dashed around the corner, Sam close on her heels.
Agent Murray raised his gun on them, but Sam was in the way. He cursed to himself and raised his wrist to his mouth. “Target R’s running for it! Southeast!”
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The horse snorted and sneezed in the smoke, ash swirling into its nostrils as it flew toward Riley Stage where hundreds of people had gathered to hear the governor.
As the ringing diminished in his ears, Greyson could hear the crackling of fires, the fire alarms in buildings, the shrill screams of women and children, and worst of all – the short, powerful popping of gunfire. And it was getting louder.
I’m coming Sydney…
Two final food huts barring his view of the stage area burned to his left and right, but Greyson held his breath and steered the horse between them, taking the flames’ heat to his sides.
