White Birch Graffiti (White Birch Village Book 2)

by Jeff Van Valer

  Ted and Karen could sneak out the emergency door and run and hide behind Cabin 6 in an instant. Then Cabin 5, then 4. In a dead sprint (Ted was sure he could ignore the bleeding and knee pain), they could steal away, down the path, head straight to the archery range, then through what woods remained, about a quarter mile, to the office. They could do it. They could run where no SUV could follow. They stood a good chance to make it.

  If they weren’t already in the loft.

  “I had no idea today would be the day!” Hoss shouted.

  All right, Hoss. Time to shut up, now.

  “I told you!” Hoss shouted. “Don’t you get it?”

  “No!” Ted whispered. We can’t, Hoss! We’re in the loft! We’re stuck up here. It’s too late.

  Karen shook her head. She, too, seemed to know Hoss was secretly talking to them.

  “Shut up, Hoss,” Ted hissed.

  “You’re my WORTHY CAAAAUSE!” Hoss shouted. “You need to make the BEST of it!” Hoss uncrossed his arms quickly in another theatric flare. Only this time, his move was to unholster his Bond gun. He fired six or seven quick rounds from the Walther. The shots rang out with incredible volume. They’d be audible for a mile. The rate of shots was more than sufficient to hit each man in the head before any of them could so much as lift a weapon or fall to the ground. If anyone could do that, it’d be Hoss.

  Wouldn’t it?

  Outside, in the accumulating snow, the other five sets of legs bent, feet separated. Something was wrong. Thunder and lightning blew up from the ground. Not a single man fell. Other than Hoss.

  “NO!!” Ted shouted before clamping a hand over his own mouth.

  At least fifty rounds of automatic fire picked Hoss up from off his doorjamb and tossed him out of Ted’s view.

  “No, Hoss! NOOOO!!” Ted shouted into his hands. “I believe you! Why did you… DAMMIT, HOSS!!” His eyes filled with tears and he groaned, hiding nothing. His stomach spasmed, and he doubled forward. Ted mouthed, I believe in Jake as he rocked back and forth, wanting it all to go away. He yelled into his hands. Karen slid her warm palm and fingers onto the back of his neck. He looked into her steady, green eyes.

  “It’s not over yet, Ted,” she said to him.

  “All right,” Uncle Hugh said. “Make sure it’s done. And let’s take care of business.” A man in a black jacket walked into view, toward where the bullets had thrown Hoss.

  Karen and Ted scooted back to the darkest part of the loft as the men filed into the cabin. Uncle Hugh came first, a big pistol in his hand. Then two of the black jackets. Then a guy in jeans and a sport coat.

  Sunny.

  A lone gunshot cracked just outside to the north. The good-measure bullet-in-the-head. Ted closed his eyes and squeezed out a few more tears. Hoss was gone. Ted and Karen held still as statues in the darkness.

  “Here’s a little something for you, Mr. Black,” Uncle Hugh said.

  Sunny wretched, but nothing came up.

  “Let me introduce you to Lewis,” Hugh said, “and over here is what’s left of Mr. Gray.”

  A sudden, repeating beep filled the cabin.

  Uncle Hugh froze, then said, “What the hell?” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a phone that looked just like the one Ted had lifted from Trashcan Face. “Who the hell is this?”

  Ted had figured, why not use it? Maybe he could call for help. See just who he finds. After a delay of about two seconds, the strange-looking phone in Ted’s hand said, “Who the hell is this?”

  Ted muffled the speaker against his chest when some commotion occurred. It was Ironman. Shuffling his feet again, then speaking. “You Mr. Green?” he asked. “Hugh McDaniel?”

  Ironman lifted a pointing arm and finger toward the loft. Uncle Hugh leveled his silver-plated pistol and said, “I’m Mr. Green. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Lewis.”

  The man named Lewis flopped as Uncle Hugh put a bullet in his face.

  “Benzie county sheriff!” shouted a distant voice outside. Defensive postures. Hugh dropped his phone.

  “FUCK!” one of the men hissed.

  Sunny piped up. “Get us the hell out of here, Hugh!”

  The outside voice shouted, “Put down what you’re carrying, and step away from the cabin!”

  Black Jacket #3 jumped into the cabin, put down his gasoline cans, and drew a weapon.

  “How many are there?” #2 asked.

  “Can’t tell,” #3 said. “Just the one’s all I can see. Him and his car. Gonna have a partner. Gonna be calling for back-up.”

  “Hugh!” Sunny said. “You can take care of this, can’t you?”

  “Take ’em if you can, fellas,” Hugh said. Broken glass up front fell to the floor. “We’ll only have a few min—”

  Automatic gunfire interrupted Hugh. Jacket #2 climbed onto Buck’s old bunk, the one against the long, south wall of the cabin. Ted knew the man would be unable to see anything from there. Jacket #1 darted to the cabin’s rear and cursed. The sink area had no windows facing south at all. Number 2 jumped off Buck’s bunk and ran up front with #3.

  Uncle Hugh took three long strides into the sink area, his pistol at the ready. He popped into the toilet and shower rooms. Above the din of machine gun bursts, Ted heard the rusty-metal scrape of shower curtain rings on the iron bar that served as the curtain rod. He froze, watching Hugh through the slats of the loft’s floorboards for a moment, then turned his attention back to Jacket #1, who’d just opened, then closed, the emergency door.

  Single-round shots came from what sounded like one source outside. Jackets #2 and 3 kept up the short bursts from the counselor area.

  Karen pivoted on the balls of her feet, a deft move from the crouch she held just below the spot from which the graffiti board had been cut. Falling between the floorboards, a single, red-rose drop of her blood flowered in the snow-white basin of a sink below. It pined for, then grabbed, the man’s attention.

  Jacket #1 studied the drop for less than a second before training his eyes, then his gun, upward.

  The muzzle flash lit the space like a bolt of Mosquito Point lightning. Karen scowled horribly.

  CHAPTER 64

  Jacket #1 popped up onto his toes, dropped his weapon, and bent his arms as he fell backward onto his own starburst of blood and brain on the floor.

  The man’s arms relaxed to complete a face-up, spread-eagle position. His forehead glistened with what looked like a dime-sized dollop of maroon paint. An extreme darkness overtook Karen’s expression. She held in her hands the .45 that Ironman shot her with. She’d just killed Jacket #1.

  Uncle Hugh lifted his weapon toward Karen. She faced the other way and was clearly unaware of it. Hugh moved his head back and forth, finding a good space between the loft boards above, going for a clean shot.

  Ted put a black dot in Hugh’s temple, and the man jerked mightily. His gun went off as he did, its stray round well off its mark. Hugh’s stiff body dropped onto one of the toilets in an awkward sitting position, his head against the wall behind the tank. Karen swiveled toward Ted so quickly her hair twirled out like a skirt. Without hesitation, she squat-walked toward the front of the loft, holding her weapon exactly the way Ted had told her.

  Machine-gun fire confused the situation, the auditory equivalent of a strobe light. Ted lifted the other gun he’d taken off Trashcan Face before he and Karen jumped into the loft. This one was a silenced nine-millimeter. He had a live pistol in each hand. Against logic, his mind produced the term double-wielding, as though he were at home, safe, thumbing through a gun magazine. Doing so, he felt not one iota of glory or coolness. A nauseating kind of dread tried to overtake him, but he didn’t give it the time.

  ~~~

  Karen watched the timid guy in the sport coat and jeans as he stood at the still-seeping fringe of the gas puddle. He leaned to one side, hands in his pockets, clearly reading the board as it rested, lengthwise, against the table.

  “Hugh!” he shouted, receiving no answer. “Hugh?..
. HUUUUGH!!”

  With sudden haste and what looked like ugly realization, the timid guy pulled what looked like a disposable Bic lighter from his pocket and leaned forward, thumbing its striker wheel.

  On some sort of right-versus-wrong autopilot, Karen aimed her .45 at the man’s chest. Ted had told her she might try to compensate, on her second shot, for the recoil she experienced with the first. In so doing, she would rotate her wrists in a way that dropped her aim toward the ground. Karen was determined not to let that happen. She pulled the trigger. The timid guy spun around to his left and fell, yelling, screaming. She’d hit him off-center, maybe as far off the mid-chest as the arm or shoulder.

  Ted had also told her, in the crash handgun course he’d provided, when she squeezed the trigger with her left index finger, it might rotate the gun a little to her right. And that was exactly what happened. She’d kept the gun level, but the bullet hit the timid guy in his left shoulder, not the chest.

  If she’d missed by more than that, she would’ve shot the two gasoline cans sitting in the doorway between the cabin’s counselor and bunk areas. But as it turned out, she didn’t shoot the gas cans, and she’d kept the timid guy from striking the lighter.

  Karen held her aim as the timid guy met gazes with her.

  “Hey!” he shouted in a lull between machine gun bursts. “HAAAAAAAYY! SHE HAS A GUN! Up… Up in the LAWWFFTT!! HUGH!! HUUUUUGH!!”

  In Karen’s peripheral field of view, Ted’s gun pointed toward the gas cans. That’s exactly when the jacketed men appeared, slapping long, black objects into the bottoms of guns like she had only seen on television and in the movies. Both men hit the left sides of their guns with the heels of their hands and pointed to the loft.

  Already aiming, hoping against hope the men wouldn’t shoot, Karen held her gun steady and pulled the trigger. She tried her best not to let the gun rotate this time. She and Ted fired. At least one bullet went low and successfully made it through both gasoline cans. In four casual parabolas, the cans issued their contents into a growing puddle.

  The Bic lighter in his one good hand, the timid guy dragged himself toward the first puddle.

  The two men were not quick enough with their machine guns. They spasmed, stiffened, and fell into the spilling gasoline, one forward and one back. The former’s finger squeezed his gun’s trigger and sent a spray of bullets upward as he fell. One of the struts next to Karen’s face split down the middle. Splintered wood rained into her hair as a pretty, cerulean wave spread over the puddle closer to the loft. When the expanding blue color reached the bottom of the empty gas can, a crisp but understated FUMP! blew a gash in its side and shot it across the room.

  As it did, the timid guy seemed to sob. Orange vines of flame grew up the table’s legs and the graffiti board. The proud old wood of the floor pulled at the burning puddle’s edges. Cabin 7 would burn formidably. It would heat the camp and light the entire lake. Majestic plumes of smoke would drift across the highway and catch attention from White Birch Village, Lake Ann, and reach as far as Traverse City. Cabin 7 would exit White Birch Camp—in the prophetic words of a guy Karen knew in college—like a fucking rock star.

  CHAPTER 65

  “Karen! Cover me!” Ted gave his other gun to Karen and thrashed his way out of the loft. She took the gun and promptly aimed it at Sunny. Ted writhed his way painfully through the struts and crossties and, after what seemed half an eternity, to the floor. The impact on the hollow, wooden base of the bunk area might have blown his knee joint apart. As far as he could tell, his left side split open.

  Bleeding profusely from his left upper arm, Sunny tried to get up but fell back down.

  Leaping around the table, Ted grabbed the one chair not burning. He stuck its back legs into the fire, beyond the graffiti board. Pulling, he dragged the board clear of the flame and kicked it a few feet toward Sunny’s old bunk.

  The flames stretched along the board’s length.

  The parabolas of spilling accelerant degenerated into ejaculatory sprays as the gas cans began to glug like milk jugs emptying into a sink. The gasoline splashed onto the bodies of the last two, downed gunmen. Once the growing new puddle—or its fumes—reached the fire only feet away, the gas would go up in an eyeblink. When the flame reached the fumes inside the cans, they’d blow apart, and a mist of gasoline would fill Cabin 7, where it would ignite like ether.

  Ted hobbled quickly to Sunny, who lay in a fetal position just under Cal Owen’s 1938 graffiti.

  ~~~

  Karen slipped through the rafters, quickly but awkwardly, a gun in each hand. She coughed from the smoke. Her shoulder wound slowly bleeding into her white top, she lurched from the bunk and landed squarely.

  Aiming a pistol at Sunny, trying to be careful not to point at Ted, she moved to the burning rafter. Feet straddling the graffiti board, she lifted one foot over the other, turning the board over, names down. Then she did it again. And again until the flames were out.

  She had no time to see if the board was still legible.

  Ted dropped the jacket off his own shoulders and tossed it to Karen. “Use it to grab the board!” he said. “We gotta get out.”

  ~~~

  To Ted, Sunny looked like nothing but a frightened, twelve-year-old kid. Out of his element at camp. Ted knew how that felt. But Sunny had erred somewhere along the way, and there was no time for sympathy.

  Sunny: “Ted?”

  Ted: “Shut up.”

  Karen: “Ted! I have the board! Let’s go!”

  “You’re coming with us, Sunny.”

  “Ted!”

  The shot gas cans glugged a little more slowly. The Black Jackets’ clothes soaked up the extra fuel. The fumes would catch any second.

  Sunny: “No, I’m not.” He made no effort to get up.

  Ted: “Oh yes, you are. You killed my friends. And you killed my WIFE!”

  Karen: “TED!!”

  Ted slapped his hands on Sunny’s lapels and yanked with sudden, super-human strength. Sunny let his legs collapse like a child who didn’t want to go to his room for a nap. Ted leaned down and grabbed Sunny by the armpits. He dragged the bleeding man toward the emergency door.

  “Leave me here!” Sunny said. “Shoot me now. Anything. I’m so sorry, Ted.”

  “Shut the hell UP!”

  Sunny’s feet gained purchase on the floor and pushed backward into Ted, knocking him off balance. Ted let go to keep from falling into the fire, and Sunny dropped, face-first, into the flames.

  Karen double-wielded, her hair covering half her face. The growing circle of blood on her tank top was the size of a softball.

  “LET’S GO!!” she shouted.

  It was a command Ted meant to follow. He grabbed Sunny’s ankles. The man’s blood hissed and popped in the amoeba of flame. Ted dragged him back to the sink area, over the body of Black Jacket #1, and toward the emergency door.

  “Let me die!” Sunny said. “Tell my wife! Tell my baby! They deserve better…”

  “Nope!” Ted said, straining against his dragged burden. “You tell them yourself!”

  Ted hurried, not so much away from an impending explosion, but with the knowledge that Sunny would soon hemorrhage himself into shock from the wound Karen had put in his now-paralyzed arm. Ted would see Sunny pay for what he’d done or die trying. For that reason, he dropped the man’s ankles and hiked him up by the armpits, holding pressure on the gunshot wound.

  Karen dropped her guns into the nearest sink and went for the emergency door. When she twisted the knob and pushed, she opened a conduit. The cold lake’s gale shot through the cabin from front to back, blowing the emergency door’s knob out of her hand. The door flew open, swinging fully on its hinges, splitting its own frame as it cracked into the cabin’s back corner.

  The authorities shouted.

  “Sheriff’s Department!”

  “Police!”

  “Get away from the cabin!”

  “Hands where I can see them!”


  As Ted dragged Sunny and held pressure on his shoulder, he passed the cubbies when the tunnel of cold wind blew the spilling gasoline’s fumes into the modest flame.

  “Get down!” shouted one of the officers.

  “KAREN! RUN!” Ted shouted. “GET BEHIND CABIN SI—”

  The cans blew apart and radiated a fine mist of gasoline into the cabin’s main living space. When the airborne hydrocarbon blended with the surplus oxygen and flame, its reaction was instantaneous. The hot vapors exploded.

  The blast knocked Karen off her feet. The board and coat fell from her hands. A window screen’s frame flew out toward Ted and lacerated Sunny’s burned face. The glass windows above the sinks shattered into the cold.

  Ted dropped his payload to the ground and let himself fall onto Sunny’s back. He slid his hand beneath the bleeding man’s left arm and resumed pressure on the wound.

  “Get offa that man!” said one of the officers.

  “He’s been shot!” Ted said.

  But it was over. Ted stopped worrying about the board. He and Karen had failed. Bradie wouldn’t be able to take the pictures and send the messages around the world. McDaniel Security had won the fight. Sure, Ted and Karen had taken out a few of them, but their nationwide back-up measures, in their uniforms and spinning lights, had arrived in force to erase the past. Ted wanted Karen to be the last person he ever saw, so he kept his eyes on her.

  She stood up.

  Karen! No! Get back down!

  Loose strands of her hair acted as a half dozen windsocks pointing away from the lake. On her windward side, Karen’s jeans tightened, their redundant denim waving on her legs’ inland sides. Her left hand covered her own bleeding right shoulder. She stood strong and defiant, hands empty, rolling her brave, green eyes toward Ted.

  “DOWN ON THE GROUND!!” a couple officers shouted at her.