Denis crouched down beside us, as did his brother. Alain Tremblay was trying to clear everyone else out of the parking lot, pushing them into the building. It looked like the skinny kid with the rifle didn’t want to go inside.
“We can use all the guns we can get,” I said.
The boy smiled and I immediately regretted my words.
Alain frowned at me but led the kid along the wall of the building, heading around the far side to guard our rear.
“Stems?” Justin asked.
“Sounds like it,” I said. “Or one of his men.”
“Just one?” Denis asked.
“Only one gun so far,” Justin said. “But it’s possible that it’s a feint.”
“Someone’s probably sneaking around the other side of the building,” I said. “That’s why Alain is heading over there now.”
“You guys are good,” Denis said.
“We’ve been lucky so far.”
I heard another gunshot, coming from the far side of the building. I nodded to Justin and I ran toward Alain’s position.
He had the vest and the helmet; I was sure he was okay.
I poked my head around the corner of the building, and saw Alain and the skinny boy pinned along the wall. Alain had his rifle poking around the other corner, but I wasn’t sure if he was actually able to see anything.
I made my way up the wall, finding a place between him and the boy, my back to a window; I knew it wasn’t a safe place to stand.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“Someone was trying to sneak up on us,” Alain said quietly. “I think I may have hit him.”
“Let me see,” I said, slipping in front of him. In the end, Alain’s just good at hunting deer; he’s never had to fight anything that shoots back.
I looked around the corner, relying on the helmet to keep my head in one piece. I couldn’t see anyone; the only thing between us and the trees was a large piece of metal tubing. I knew that’s probably where he’d taken cover; he could stay there all day without us being able to hit him.
A grenade would have been a good choice if I’d had any.
Matt had told me there’d been three men that day out by Clute. I don’t know if Stems, if it was Stems, would have brought more people up with him from wherever he’s been keeping himself, but I knew that there was at least one more of them than we’d heard from so far. Maybe one of them was up with their truck, guarding it or something…but my gut told me that Stems would go all in on an attack like this.
“There’s one more out there,” I said in a whisper. “I don’t want to take any chances until we know where that third guy is.”
I heard more automatic fire, probably from that first position in the trees. The shooter was trying to keep Justin and the Girards pinned down at their truck.
A second burst came, this one from the man behind the tubing. The shots slammed into the brick wall and shattered the glass of a full-length window. A few bullets came right through the building and cracked the window only a few inches from the skinny boy’s head.
“Move back,” I said to him. “Keep away from the window.”
He stepped back until he was covered by the brick.
“He’s trying to keep us right where we are,” I said. “So where is number three?”
“Where did they come from?” Alain asked.
“There’s plenty of forest to hike through…it’s not like the Marchands control anything north of here.”
I heard the sound of a vehicle, but from where I was standing I couldn’t see it; someone was driving up to the terminal building from the access road.
“Maybe that’s the third guy,” the skinny kid said.
More automatic fire came, from the trees to the north again. I heard the screech of tires followed by the opening of more than one car door.
“You guys hold here,” I said.
“Will do,” Alain said.
“And I need the truck keys.”
Alain reached into his pocket for the keys, and once he’d fished them out he tossed them over to me.
I threw myself to the ground, crawling back toward the parking lot so the man in the grass wouldn’t see me. I found my way back to Jordan and the Girards, who were still crouched behind the engine block. I could see the two Marchand boys from the roadblock hiding behind their truck, too.
“I think Stems is sneaking up behind us,” I said.
“I’ll go with you,” Justin said.
“No…I need you right here.”
I held out the shotgun to Denis, who looked like he’d already emptied his handgun. “Try this,” I said.
He took it and nodded.
I ran over to our truck, trying to keep as low as I could while I climbed in. I drove it down toward the runway, scanning the area for any sign of movement.
Stems could be on foot; I expected that I’d draw him out with the truck, that he’d pop out and start shooting, but maybe he’d just hold tight and wait until I’d driven right by wherever he was concealing himself.
I pulled onto the runway and followed it toward the west, moving closer to where the tarmac came right close to the edge of Lillabelle Lake. I hadn’t seen anything, and it made me wonder if I’d made a costly mistake, if I’d gone south when I should have stayed up near the first two gunmen, so sure of myself that I’d given Stems and his Spirit Animals a chance to take everyone out.
I turned around and headed back toward the air terminal building, and that’s when I saw something. Just a glint of reflected light…maybe nothing, coming from a small shed not far off the runway, between it and the parking lot. I tried not to slow down as I passed by. I watched out the rearview window and saw a man in a painted helmet and body armour poking his head out the door of the shed. No tiger stripes…a grinning shark.
I slammed on the brakes and pulled my Sig Sauer. I leaned out the window and took the shot.
He returned fire, spraying the truck with automatic bullets. I scrambled across the cab and out the passenger side door, making my way to the tail instead of the engine block at the front. I hadn’t even had time to turn off the engine.
My corps was protected, my head was somewhat safe, too…I knew he might try to take out my legs, but they’d be tough targets to hit.
I reached the end of the truck and ran out toward the back of the shed, shooting at the door as I went. He hadn’t been expecting me from that side, and by the time he swung his assault rifle around to find me I was already crouched behind the shed.
I expected him to start shooting right through the shed walls, so I crouched as low as I could, hoping to hit one of his armour folds with my handgun before he had a chance to knock me down.
But he didn’t shoot.
He’d already ran a good twenty steps before I’d realized he was heading to my truck.
He reached the truck before I had a chance to take aim. He climbed in the driver’s side door and hit the gas pedal without bothering to close the door on the far side.
I emptied a clip at the cab of the truck, but I don’t think I hit him. I ran after him but obviously I couldn’t keep up. As I worked to reload my gun I watched the truck speed up on its way toward the terminal building.
I aimed for the tires on my second attempt, trying to slow the truck down. I managed to take one of them out.
The truck swerved as it neared the end of the parking lot.
I heard two shots.
The grain truck slammed into the back of the Girards’ Ford F-350, splitting the pickup’s bumper and lower frame from the box, which was thrown up onto the hood of our truck. Together the two vehicles careened forward into the corner of the air terminal building. The Ford pickup tore open a large gash in the brick, but that was as far as it went.
By the time I reached the scene of the collision Justin was already there.
“Looks like Sharky is pretty fucking dead,” Justin said.
The man hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt, and he’d been thrown fr
om the cab of our truck, through the windshield, and into the back of the F-350 just as it was being crumpled upward by the bumper from the grain truck. The helmet had kept his head intact, but the neck panels hadn’t kept a shard of metal from slicing through his throat.
“I hope to god that’s Ryan Stems,” Justin said.
“I doubt we’re that lucky,” I said.
Justin leaned in and pulled off the helmet.
It wasn’t Stems. His hair was too light of a brown, and his eyes were green. You could kind of tell that Stems was half-native, but this guy looked about as far from Cree as you could get.
I saw that Alain was still pinned to the wall, despite the hulking mess that was only a few meters away.
But the skinny kid was standing beside the wreckage, holding his hunting rifle like a trophy.
“Good shot,” I told him. “And a lucky one.”
I walked over to Alain.
“He’s still out there?” I asked.
“I think so,” Alain said. “I haven’t seen any movement.”
“No gunfire?”
“Nothing…nothing from the other guy, either.”
“Okay…keep holding here, alright?”
Alain nodded.
I went back to find Justin, who was still standing by the wreckage. “We still have two more shooters,” I said.
“I think they’ve run off,” Justin said. “Been nothing since you left in the truck.”
I saw Eva Marchand poke her head out the door.
“What is happening?” she asked. “Is everyone safe?”
“Just stay inside,” I said. “We haven’t cleared the area.”
She didn’t argue and disappeared back into the terminal building.
“Are you ready?” I asked Justin.
He nodded.
We slowly walked around the Girards’ truck, me with my pistol and Justin with his rifle. We walked toward the trees, both of us crouching as low as we could. I kept my eye on the metal tubing, and as we passed far enough for me to see behind it, I could see that there was no one there.
We reached the trees and searched through them, and I found where the second shooter had been positioned, a pile of expended shells littering the forest floor.
“They’re long gone,” Justin said.
“They left a man behind,” I said.
“Do you think Stems was one of the other two shooters?”
“I’m not sure…I’m not even sure Stems was involved in this. It all seems pretty amateur.”
“Amateur? They seemed to have some pretty big guns for amateurs.”
“Think about it, Justin…even with their assault rifles we were still pretty evenly matched, especially since we have three guys in body armour. And the first guy opened fire too early, before the second was in position, and long before the third was close enough to take his shots.”
“They still came pretty damned close to ramming that truck into us.”
“Not that close. This just doesn’t seem like something Stems would do.”
We started heading back to the terminal building. I swooped down to pick up a couple of shells. They looked the same as the ones that killed Ant.
“They probably didn’t expect us to be standing around outside with guns,” Justin said. “They probably thought we’d all step inside for the meeting and leave our guns in our vehicles.”
That got me thinking.
“That was the plan,” I said. “Livingston would make sure that none of us were armed, including me…and then he’d deliver his message and sneak out early.”
“The Walkers?”
“They’d only have to take out that one kid, and then they could just walk on in and kill every last one of us if they wanted to.”
“And the plan fell apart when we wouldn’t disarm.” He shook his head. “I don’t know, Baptiste…I just don’t think the Walkers would try something like that.”
“I guess we know who we can ask about that,” I said.
We returned to the air terminal building and found three of the Marchand boys keeping watch with their rifles. We went inside and found everyone else sitting around a long meeting table. For a moment it felt like everything was just supposed to go back to normal. But that was silly, since normal probably doesn’t include what I was planning on doing to Fisher Livingston.
But then I realized that Livingston wasn’t there.
“Where the hell did he go?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Sara said. “He never came inside.”
I looked over to Justin.
“He wasn’t outside,” Justin said. “We would’ve seen him.”
“He has to be somewhere,” I said.
“Then we find him.”
But we didn’t find him. We searched for twenty minutes, checking broom closets, equipment sheds, and even an old Cessna that was parked off the runway.
Fisher Livingston and the Walkers’ white cargo van had disappeared. That only made him look guiltier.
A couple of the Marchand boys gave us a ride back home, with Sara riding in the cab and the rest of us in the back of their pickup. We siphoned what was left from our truck into their tank as payment, and I think we probably lost some fuel at the end of it.
But at least no one had gotten hurt, aside from the idiot with the eagle feathers who came late to his own funeral.
I‘m not sure that idiot was one of Stems’ men.
I pushed for Lisa with the handheld once we reached the bridge. We had the Marchands drop us there, which is pretty much how things are handled these days; no one really lets other families get too close to where they live.
We met the cart not long after turning to walk down New Post Road. Graham was driving and Lisa was sitting beside him, and the back was so full that I wondered if there’d be room for four more of us.
Pretty much everyone hopped off when the cart had stopped. They gathered around us like we were The Beatles. Or whatever band anyone else would have heard of.
“Thank goodness you’re okay,” Fiona said as she ran up to hug Sara. She glanced over at me, but glanced away once she saw me looking at her.
“Thank Baptiste and Justin,” Alain said. “Those two are like superheroes.”
“You were pretty badass, too,” Justin said with a wide grin.
“We were lucky,” I said. “That’s all.”
We all squeezed onto the cart, Alain sitting somewhat awkwardly on the bench between Graham and Lisa.
“You should have been better prepared,” Lisa said. I knew what she was trying to say, but I wasn’t about to reveal that secret in front of everyone.
“Was it Stems?” Kayla asked as she sat down beside me on the cart. She was visibly shaken.
“I don’t know,” I said, reaching around her with my arm and feeling her lean in against me. “Those guys certainly looked the part, but maybe that was just for show.”
“It could have been anyone,” Justin said. “I mean that. Anyone we didn’t see at that meeting might have been hiding in the trees with an assault rifle. The Lamarches, the Smiths…”
“But who has an assault rifle?” Fiona asked. “Can’t be that many people.”
“We have no way of knowing,” I said. “It’s not hard to believe that someone could have a stash of weapons they’ve been saving for a rainy day.”
“I don’t think so,” Graham called out from up front. “We gathered up every gun in the district for patrolling. People were glad to help out.”
“Legal guns, maybe,” Justin said. “You don’t honestly believe some outfitter with a secret AK-47 is going to offer it up for show and tell, do you?”
“Probably not,” I said. “So we don’t know who it was. Our best bet at finding out went flying through our windshield.”
After we pulled up to the stable, Sara dragged me out to the dock. It seemed conspicuous to me, but maybe everyone else just thought she was wanting some kind of adrenaline-rush makeout session.
“Do you think
it was the Walkers?” she asked once we were alone.
“Honestly…that’s my best guess. If Stems had been running the op it wouldn’t have turned into such a clusterfuck. That dead guy was wearing a helmet painted with eagle feathers…could be legit, but it feels like someone really wanted to make that attack look like those Spirit Animal assholes.”
“I guess if Stems had been there people would have gotten hurt.”
“I didn’t say that. We weren’t sitting ducks. We know how to protect ourselves.”
“I know. I just don’t believe it, you know? Dave Walker trying to have us killed.”
“Or maybe if it was Dave Walker he was just trying to scare the shit out of us, make us think twice before going after those supplies.”
“No…that doesn’t make sense. If they wanted us to be scared of them they would’ve been more obvious. Now everyone thinks it was Stems.”
“That’s a good point,” I said. “So if it was Dave Walker he probably was trying to kill us.”
“That’s comforting.”
“Sure is…or maybe he was just trying to kill a few of us.”
“Like maybe just you and Justin.”
“Why me?” I asked, half joking.
“With you two gone I doubt anyone would go up against the Walkers. They’d have no issue keeping those extra supplies.”
“It does sound crazy,” I said. “Dave Walker outfitting his kids with body armour and telling them to go shoot people, just so they can keep more than their fair share of the kidney beans.”
She leaned in and kissed me.
“Gunfights turn you on?” I asked with a grin.
“You turn me on, Baptiste. My Creole superhero.” She giggled a little bit, which was adorable.
Sometimes I can’t believe a woman like Sara would willingly sit on a dock with a guy like me.
3
Today is Thursday, December 13th.
I woke up in the middle of the night to a full-blown panic attack. I’d been dreaming about gun battles, nothing that unusual for me, but this time it felt different, like I was protecting everything and everyone I loved and I was about to lose it all, and when I opened my eyes I felt ready to scream.
When it happens I feel the anxiety, but I also feel embarrassed, like I’m a wimp for not being able to handle a few scary dreams. I think that pushes it further, my panic starts to build and then I get even more ashamed of myself and the cycle repeats.
After The Fires Went Out: Coyote atfwo-1 Page 12
