Grace Under Fire

by Franklin Horton

  Blake looked at her defiantly, still trying not to cry. He did not want to give her the satisfaction. Grown-ups weren’t supposed to act like that. He’d never been around people like her. His back hurt so badly.

  There was another crash in the kitchen and Debbie looked in that direction. It didn’t sound like something spilled. It sounded like someone was raking things out of the cabinets. Debbie went back to the bedroom door and opened it, looking down the hall. She turned back to the children. "I'm going to go check on what's going on in the kitchen. I’m going to make sure Mrs. Brown is okay. If either of you comes out of this door you’ll be sorry."

  She looked hard at Blake, making sure he understood the warning. Blake glanced at Dylan and could see that he was terrified. Blake could tell he’d been talked to this way before. Maybe Dylan was telling the truth. Maybe she had tricked it out of him. When he looked back at the door, it was shut and Debbie was gone.

  "Your mommy is mean," Blake said.

  Dylan only nodded, his eyes wide with fear. "Paul is worse. He hits me."

  "Your mommy talks like she'd hit you too. She said she’d hit us if we left the room."

  "She might slap you in the face or spank you really, really hard. Paul hits you like a grown-up though.”

  Blake got up from the floor and went to his dresser. He opened the top drawer and dug around for a moment, coming out with a short fixed-blade knife in a plastic sheath. The knife was thin and had a skeletonized handle. There was a clip on the sheath and Blake clipped the knife inside his shorts, hiding the handle with his t-shirt.

  Dylan watched curiously. “Are you going to kill my mommy?”

  Blake looked at him seriously. “If she tries to hurt me or my family I’ll kill her. That’s what my daddy said to do.”

  Dylan thought for a moment. “I hope you kill Paul. He’s a son-of-a-bitch.”

  Blake's mind raced. He wondered what had happened to Mrs. Brown. There was more going on, he could feel it. He thought about his mother and wondered if she was okay. He wanted to go check on her but he was afraid to leave the room, afraid Debbie or Paul would catch him and hurt him. Even with the knife, he was not sure he was big enough to fight them.

  His parents talked to him about how to fight off bad people but the last thing they always said was run away and scream for help if you could. Here, at the remote cabin, that wouldn't help. There was nowhere to run and there was no one to hear him if he screamed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Hardwick Farm

  Leslie didn't exactly regain consciousness as much as awareness seeped into her aching body like rain through a cheap raincoat. When she woke up, she realized that she had never hurt so badly in her entire life. Not after childbirth, not after her hysterectomy, not even with the death of her husband.

  Neither eye would open, making it hard for her to tell whether she was really awake or just imagining the entire experience. She gingerly felt her face and immediately realized why her eyes wouldn’t open. Her face was a distorted mass of swollen and scabby flesh. Between the swelling and the unexpected textures, the face she’d touched her entire life was nearly unrecognizable to her.

  She put two fingers against what she thought was her eyelid and attempted to pry it open. A mix of blood and discharge had glued the lids together. As she forced them apart, she could feel eyelashes being torn out by the roots. When the lids of one eye were open, the light coming through the tiny slit made her head explode in pain. When she took her fingers away, the swelling forced it closed again. The only way she could keep it open enough to see was to keep her fingers in place, manually holding her eyelids open.

  The pain in her head, in her eyes, and throughout the rest of her battered body led to her regain consciousness quickly. It was then that she became aware that her legs were cold and damp. She started to move a hand to her thighs and cried out from the pain in her arm. She knew this pain. She’d experienced it before, as a child. Her arm was fractured.

  She tentatively moved the other arm and found it was still operational. She moved it to her thighs and realized she had lost bladder control while she was being kicked.

  “That bastard,” she hissed.

  She tried to push herself up and found that she could not. The pain in her arm was too much and there was a new pain in her chest that she suspected may be broken ribs. She was lucky none had punctured a lung. She wouldn’t have survived that. She wasn’t certain that she’d even survive what had already been done to her.

  With her good arm she felt for her back pocket, thinking of revenge. One thing that may conquer her pain and get her to her feet was the desire to go put a bullet in Paul’s brain. The pistol was gone

  Paul had probably remembered it from when she pulled it on him in the trailer and shot into the wall. There was no way he was going to leave a pistol on her. When she rolled over onto her stomach she experienced a broad spectrum of pain. Besides her broken ribs, her back hurt in a way that took her breath. She could feel things inside her, organs and such, that were swollen and displaced from their normal location. She accepted the fact she was probably going to die. She could only hope that she lived long enough to see Paul go first.

  Using her good arm, she eventually worked her way into a kneeling position. From there, with several more minutes of excruciating effort, she was able to rise to her knees, and then stand. When she made it to her feet, her head spun and she saw white bursts of light behind her eyelids. She felt like she was going to faint.

  Leslie threw her hands up to her face, trying to rub away the dizziness, and the movement of her broken arm was immediately sobering. She straightened, pried her eye apart, and looked around. She was in the yard and it was still daylight. Those were the only things of which she was sure. She could hear nothing from the house and see nothing of any consequence.

  She could not go in there now. She was in no position to take Paul on. If he got a hold of her again he would kill her. She feared for her grandson but she would have to hope that somehow Debbie’s maternal instinct would make her protect him until she could get herself together. Leslie did not know what else to do. She did not have any keys to the vehicles and knew of no other means of escape or getting help.

  She spotted the barn and knew it would be open. The family didn’t keep it locked. With her good arm, she kept her eyelids pinched open, holding her broken arm against her chest. In that manner she gimped on to the barn. It seemed to take forever and at one point she became concerned that someone might be following her. Had they been, there was nothing she could have done.

  Once at the barn, she had to let go of her eye to slide the rolling barn door open. Pushing on the heavy door put a lot of stress on her torso and everything inside her screamed out in pain. She bit it down, literally biting her tongue to keep from screaming. When she had the door open just enough to get through, she slipped inside and pushed the door back closed.

  She pried open her eyelid again and scanned the dark interior of the barn. There was enough light coming in around the cracks of the door that she could see well enough. This was where the family kept their tractor, animal feed, and livestock bedding. In one corner she saw several bales of hay. She went over and used her good arm to drag two hay bales side-by-side. There was an empty feed sack at her feet and she spread it out on the hay bales. As gently as she could, she eased her aching body onto on the hay bales and lay down. In a matter of minutes she was unconscious again.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Arthur Bridges’ Compound

  Robert and Sonyea again headed out of Arthur’s compound, this time by means of an old logging road. Arthur made them a crude map showing the relationship between the logging road, the compound, and the surrounding public roads. While both of them were painfully aware that plans could change instantly, they had a general idea of what they wanted to do. They were going to follow the logging road to the cleared right-of-way beneath the high tension power lines and then follow it. It would be rough going b
ut it would get them to the next stage of their journey.

  Robert had ridden a horse before but not enough to brag about. He was not accustomed to their ways. Sonyea led and he followed behind, impressed at her grace and ease in the saddle. Not only was he uncomfortable in the saddle but he was distrusting of horses in general. He expected that any moment the horse would dump him to the ground out of spite and take off running. Sonyea had laughed at him when he mounted the horse and giggled every time she turned around and looked at him.

  "Relax," she said. "You have a long ride ahead of you. You might as well make friends with the animal."

  "I'm more comfortable with things with motors."

  "The horse can be your best friend if you let it. This is an experience you and the horse are sharing together."

  "We’ll see. Not sure about that whole friendship thing."

  Arthur's compound was bordered by national forest. Having bought property in such a location increased the amount of empty forest around him. When Robert and Sonyea neared the property boundary they began to encounter signs placed by Arthur warning stray hikers that they were entering a Live-Fire Training Range and were at risk of death if they continued.

  The signs were accompanied by a simple infographic that showed a skull being penetrated with a bullet and a few drops of blood spraying in the air. The message was clear: Keep out or die. Arthur found the signs to be more effective than simple No Trespassing signs.

  Just beyond the signs they encountered marker trees. Some had three yellow rings painted on them, others had two white rings. They were painted that way by surveyors to mark the boundaries of the property. Shortly past the painted trees something zipped past Robert’s head. His first thought was that it had been a hummingbird or some type of insect. When he turned his head toward it, he saw a chunk splinter out of a tree.

  It was a gunshot.

  His mind raced. Bullets flying. No report, must be suppressed.

  Get down.

  We need to get down.

  He kicked his horse and it lunged forward. Sonyea was confused. He gripped her reins and slid off his own horse. Just as his leg cleared the saddle, suppressed gunfire stitched its side. The animal reared and dropped with an unnerving scream.

  Robert grabbed Sonyea around the waist and dragged her from the back of her horse. She fell to the ground and he threw himself on top of her. His horse kicked and cried out. Sonyea's horse was terrified by the noise of the dying animal and bolted, taking off deep into the woods.

  Robert drew his pistol and began firing over top of the injured horse. He couldn't see what he was firing at and didn't even know where to aim. He blasted away blindly, trying to keep the shooter from having such an easy job of it. Robert rolled away from the horse and stood up behind a broad poplar tree. He started to shoot around it but gunfire shredded the bark in front of his face, spraying him with splinters. He ducked back.

  "Are you okay?" he called to Sonyea.

  She was stroking the now-still horse and crying. She didn’t respond.

  "Are you okay?" he repeated.

  Yes," she moaned. "I think so."

  "We have to get outta here."

  "How?"

  She continued to stroke the horse and speak softly to it. It shuddered and stopped breathing. Sonyea began sobbing.

  Robert’s AR pistol was dangling around his neck on a single-point sling. He brought up the weapon and flipped the safety off. He fired two rounds blindly around the corner of the tree, following up with a quick glance to see if he could spot the shooter.

  The forest was dense, the trees still leafed-out. The sun shining through the leaves created a carpet of dappled light that made it difficult to spot anything in the forest. There were so many chaotic patterns going on here naturally that even someone wearing street clothes would be difficult to spot. If the shooter had on camo, Robert didn't have a chance in hell of finding him.

  "Were going to have to back out of here and get back to the compound. We’ll retreat one tree at a time and try to cover each other. Do you still have a weapon?"

  Sonyea reached to her hip and felt for her pistol. It was locked in the holster right where she expected it to be. She had lost the shotgun. She'd wrapped the sling around her saddle horn and it was probably still dangling there. She couldn’t see the horse anywhere. It was probably long gone.

  “I've got my pistol. That's it."

  "It'll have to do. Get ready. I'm going to shoot. When I do, you go back to the next closest tree that will cover you. Zigzag, make yourself a hard target."

  She nodded but Robert was focused on the woods. He didn’t see her gesture.

  "Did you hear me?"

  "Yes," she replied shakily.

  Robert fired a blind shot around the corner, then he drew the weapon to his shoulder and fired around the corner. At his first shot, Sonyea was on her feet and sprinting for the nearest tree. Robert heard the spitting sound of suppressed fire. Rounds chased Sonyea, throwing up showers of leaves from the forest floor, but none reached her. Robert ducked back behind the tree and flattened himself against it.

  "You good?" he asked.

  "I'm good. Tell me when you're ready and I'll fire."

  "Go!"

  Sonyea curled around the tree and sent five evenly spaced rounds into the forest. Robert pushed away from his tree, sprinting for a fat white oak. He tried to zigzag but was disappointed in his agility and speed. He’d trained for all kinds of things but this was not one of them.

  He reached his target tree just as a line of fire raked up the side of it. Chunks of bark bit into his arm and neck. He flinched and slapped a hand to his neck. There was blood but it was just scratches.

  "I'm good," he called. “You ready?"

  When she confirmed that she was, Robert fired aggressively behind them. Shortly, Sonyea called to him that she was secure again. So it went, tree to tree, and with blind gunfire until they were able to conceal themselves behind a ridge and begin running. Robert did not like the feeling of that. He was certain that at any moment the shooter would cut them off. He may even have a partner and the two of them would box Robert and Sonyea in.

  The pair had no radio with which to call for help. Their only hope was that their gunfire would draw reinforcements as it had earlier. It did. Their retreat came to a sudden stop when three men in ghillie suits burst from cover and began shouting orders at them. The pair skidded to a halt and threw their hands up.

  "Identify yourselves!" one of the men barked.

  "We’re returning to the compound. I'm Robert Hardwick! We took fire and got turned around!" Robert was certain these were Arthur's men. He and Sonyea had left on horses and were returning on foot. They were lucky they weren’t shot.

  The man spoke into his radio. When he received instructions he ran to Robert, his weapon raised and at the ready. He patted Robert on the back.

  “Go! Go!"

  The man covered their retreat. The other two men in ghillie suits melted back into the shadows.

  Robert and Sonyea fled through the woods. They'd come nearly a mile on the horses and it took them a good bit longer to get back on foot. Behind them they heard what they assumed to be the men in ghillie suits engaging the man or men who’d shot at them.

  A bit further up the logging road they ran into Arthur and the doctor on a side-by-side ATV. They were still geared up from earlier. Each carried rifles in holders mounted on the ATV. Arthur was driving and stopped the machine.

  "Are you two okay? Did you get hit?"

  "Don’t know about okay but not hit," Robert said. He was breathing hard as the adrenaline still surged through his body. His hands were shaking. Being shot at would do that to a person.

  The doctor wasn't taking Robert's word for it. He was checking out Sonyea. She was still upset about losing the horse and the entire experience of coming under attack. He mistook her emotional state for an indication that she'd been injured.

  She pushed him away. "I'm fine, I'm fine."

/>   The doctor backed off.

  The radio in a case on Arthur’s vest chirped. "Thermal shows one shooter. Has a shooting position in a tree stand."

  Arthur plucked his radio from his vest and pushed the transmit button. "Engage the target."

  There was a loud boom from the direction Robert and Sonyea had come from. It was louder than all the previous gunfire. To Robert it sounded like a single round from a long-range rifle. There was a single follow-up shot, then silence.

  "Target down," came the update.

  "We're surrounded," Sonyea said.

  "You may be right," Arthur said. "They can only tighten the noose if it's completely around our necks."

  "Then we're not getting out of here," Robert said.

  "Not now," Arthur replied.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Hardwick Farm

  Since her surgery Teresa Hardwick could not sleep for long periods of time. She became uncomfortable if she remained in one position too long. A series of naps taken throughout the day seemed to be working best for her. She hadn’t been asleep that long when she heard the rattle of a pill bottle on her nightstand. She dispensed her own medications so there was no reason that anyone else would be touching the bottles. She opened her eyes.

  At her bedside stood a scraggly-looking stranger. He was reading her pill bottle with a jagged smile breaking across his face. Terrified, Teresa snapped her eyes shut, hoping she could play possum until he was gone. It didn't work. He had caught the flicker of movement.

  "I saw that, woman. I know you're awake. Don't be trying to fool me."

  Teresa still did not open her eyes. She did not want to see the man again. Did not want to see him standing over her in her most sacred and personal space.

  "Open your eyes," he demanded.

  Teresa willed her eyes to open. They fluttered as she forced them. She found herself staring into the barrel of a revolver.