Troop of Shadows

by Nicki Huntsman Smith

Thirty minutes later, Dolores returned to Dani’s room. By then, she’d used the Leatherman on the padlock with success, but kept the chain draped around her waist for appearance. If a man, any man, came to her room looking for a fuck, it would be the biggest mistake he’d ever made.

  “I told them,” the girl said.

  “All of them?”

  “Yes. There are only seven other girls like me that don’t do the sex.”

  “Seven is a lot of women though. And they’re spread out all over town, right? Do you think anyone noticed what you were doing?”

  “No, I’m very fast and nobody saw me. That’s because I can be invisible.” The girl grinned.

  Dani decided the first order of business, if she survived the day, would be to get her a toothbrush.

  “I’m joking. I know that’s not possible, but I feel that way a lot. People don’t see me most of the time. And if they do, they usually say ugly things. It’s better to be invisible.”

  Dani felt a tiny crack in her Grinch heart. Fergus would be so proud.

  “And you told all the sex girls to stay away from their windows, right?”

  Dolores rolled her eyes and huffed out a breath.

  “Sorry. You understand why we have to be so careful, right?”

  “Yes, because there’s going to be an explosion of epic proportion and everyone who has a cock will be blown to fucking smithereens.”

  She laughed at her own words parroted back verbatim. She liked this girl.

  “That’s right. Now I think it’s time to go find your boss. Do you remember what you’re supposed to say?”

  “Yes. ‘Mister Jacob, you gotta come quick. The new girl is fiddling with her lock. I think she’s trying to escape!’ How’s that?”

  Dani raised her eyebrows. “Perfect. You got every word right. And your acting ability is stellar.”

  “I remember everything. Pa hated it. Said it wasn’t natural for a person to be able to do that.”

  “You have a photographic memory?”

  A quick nod. “Yes, the correct term is eidetic. I read about it in a book once. Pa wouldn’t let me go to school. Said I would be an embarrassment to the family because of how I look. So they just gave me books instead. Ma taught me to read before she died. I was three.”

  “You learned to read when you were three?”

  “Yes. I love books. They’re my most favorite thing in the world. When we get to your town, I want to work in the library.”

  She grabbed the girl’s deformed hands in her own bound ones. “You’re not dumb at all. You know that right?”

  “Yes, of course I know that. I learned a long time ago it’s better to let everyone think that. I can be more invisible if they think I’m not bright. When you look like I do, it’s best not to be noticed.”

  Dani gazed into the uneven eyes and said, “Those days are over.”

  ###

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, bitch?” Jacob’s bulk consumed most of the open doorway. Dani feigned surprise then leapt off the bed toward the window. He caught her around the waist and threw her back on the bed.

  Deep, even breaths.

  She grinned up at the red-faced man-boy with the fat belly. “What’s that smell? Oh, I know. It’s the stink of your boyfriend’s ass on your tiny dick.”

  When he struck her this time, she almost passed out from the pain.

  Deep breaths.

  “Shut the fuck up. You don’t know shit!”

  Had she stumbled upon some truth? If so, she would exploit the hell out of it. “Oh, come on. You know this is just an act. You don’t even like girls, do you? You’d much rather be rolling around in the hayloft with your tight-assed boyfriend.” She gazed up at the chubby face inches from her own, seeing nothing but malevolence. Just a little further now...

  “I doubt you can even get it up for a girl. I think the only thing that makes your dick hard is the sight of another dick.”

  He grabbed her by the arm and flung her into the hallway. She hit the wall hard but controlled.

  “I’ll show you how hard my dick gets. In front of everyone!”

  Dani hid her smile. As he pushed her down the corridor, she glanced back. Dolores stood at the opposite end. She lifted the hand that contained a pinky and a thumb. The thumb pointed up.

  When Dani stepped outside, it took a second for her eyes to adjust to the bright sunlight.

  Not enough people. Speech time.

  “Hey, everyone! Come on out! Jacob here is going to show us his wiener! Just like candy at Halloween...it’s Fun Size and loved by adolescent boys!”

  He shoved her hard from behind. Her arms were still bound in front by the zip ties, so she let her shoulder take the force of the fall. From ground level, she could see the Home Depot buckets under the wooden platform. They hadn’t been moved from where she and Sam had placed them the night before.

  Above, the prisoner stocks exuded a silent message: obey or suffer the consequences. She wondered how many people had felt its baleful embrace since Chicxulub.

  Deep breaths.

  She stood. People spilled out of buildings, rubberneckers at a grisly traffic accident. The show was about to start and nobody wanted to miss it. Dani didn’t want them to miss it either.

  “Jacob thinks he’s going to teach me a lesson, but I don’t think he can rise to the challenge. Anybody want to place a bet? I’m giving ten to one odds!”

  “Shut your fucking mouth!”

  Another backhand sent her flying to the pavement. That was a bad one. She could barely spot Sam in the gathering crowd through the stars in her vision. He started toward her, but she shook her head. He stopped.

  This was the weakest part of her plan. He would have to watch her take a beating without coming to her rescue.

  When she could see clearly again, she gave him a covert wink while ignoring his pained expression.

  Deep breaths.

  More people now. Lots of people. Who could resist the spectacle of a brutal rape? It was topnotch entertainment. Too bad there weren’t any lions and Christians handy.

  Fifty more feet to the wooden structure. She looked around. Men everywhere, eager-faced and smiling.

  Closer.

  “Come on up folks and witness Jacob’s shame. Where’s your daddy, Jacob? Shouldn’t he be watching too?”

  “I’m right here, young lady.” The voice came from too far away. She needed that one in the front row.

  “There he is! You’re the one who runs this place, right? You’re Mr. Big Shot? The Big Kahuna?”

  “That’s right. And Jacob is my son. He’s the one who’s going to pull off your pants and show you who’s in charge. He’s going to fuck you until you’re screaming for mercy.” The pale blue eyes and wintry smile reduced the surrounding crowd to soft focus. Here was the prize. Here was the king cobra slithering among the coiled rattlesnake horde.

  Closer now.

  “Is that so? He’s a chip off the old block then, huh, pops?”

  The burgeoning mob filled the street. She spotted asymmetrical features and taxicab door ears. Why was the Dolores next to Jacob’s father?

  Icicles blossomed in her stomach.

  The girl flashed her appalling smile. Tugged on the man’s sleeve and whispered something in the lowered ear.

  Oh fuck.

  She found Sam’s face. Tried to convey a wordless warning. Shifted back to the pale eyes. The frigid smile was an ear-to-ear grinning glacier.

  Damn it. She’d been so cocksure of herself. So convinced she’d schmoozed the girl with her promise of a better life. The freak’s brilliant performance had tricked her instead, with a little help from some overconfidence on her part.

  Where was Sam? She’d lost him among all the bodies. She placed one foot onto the lowest of the warped pine steps, then slowly up the remaining three to the top. Her mind raced.

  “You won’t be needing these anymore. Boys, remove those orange buckets. Carefully.”

  She watc
hed as several men came forward, then crawled under the planks and removed the fertilizer bombs. Everything was going to hell more quickly than her mind could process.

  “Now, what were you saying, young lady?”

  Glacier Man stood next to the platform now. She glared at him from three feet above while his son squeezed her bicep in a meaty vice grip.

  “I was saying that cockroaches like you need to be eradicated. You, and others like you, are what was wrong with society before. You won’t be allowed to get away with it any longer. People like me will whip out our industrial-sized cans of Raid and exterminate you. Bing, bang, boom.” She made a dismissive brushing gesture with her zip-tied hands. “No harm, no foul, and no legal system.”

  “Is that so? You fancy yourself a vigilant? A bringer of justice? A righter of wrongs? You’re pathetic. In truth you’re just a weak female with delusions of grandeur. It’s a man’s world, sweet pea. Always has been, always will be. Besides, you’re about to die, so your ridiculous little speech was not only absurd, it was ill-timed.

  “Jacob, proceed.”

  Dani locked eyes with the man responsible for the atrocities that had been daily occurrences in this place. She didn’t know his name but she knew him...his type. Not long ago, she’d seen a similar expression worn by a man who was the physical opposite of this one, but who exuded the same lack of compassion, the same need to dominate, and the same desolate wasteland where a conscience should be.

  While she’d been stalling for time with improvised rhetoric, the bigger part of her brain was formulating a new strategy; one without the explosives below her feet, which would have killed most of these jerkoffs in one fell swoop.

  The man-boy began tugging at her pants. She continued to contemplate the father while working out the logistics of her new game plan. As she did so, the throat beneath the face with the pale eyes opened up, a bloody jack-o-lantern smile under the chin.

  Sam!

  “Run, Dani!”

  Most of the crowd didn’t realize yet what had happened. She had five seconds to bust out of the zip tie, then fish the Leatherman out of her boot.

  She did both in three.

  The next moment, the son went the way of the father, receiving three quick jabs to the groin as a bonus.

  That’s for all those girls.

  Piggy eyes flew wide in surprise and a pudgy hand clutched at the injured genitals; he seemed oblivious to the eruption of blood at his collar. First his knees, then his remaining bulk collapsed onto the wooden boards.

  She leaped off the platform just as the mob began to press in.

  She moved faster than everyone; a balletic assassin dancing through bodies, slicing and stabbing and punching and kicking...eluding fists that swung, fingers that snatched, and blades that swished at the place she’d occupied a half-second earlier.

  She emerged from the throng just as a barrage of gunfire began.

  Sam grabbed her by the arm, a beautiful smile on his face. “Run like the wind!”

  As she took off, she thought: He got one right!

  Behind them, the street exploded in a cacophony of gunshots and screams. After fifty yards, she glanced back to witness a massacre, and stopped in her tracks.

  “What’s happening?”

  There were people on the roofs of the buildings that lined Main Street, firing down into the crowd. She spotted at least a dozen shooters up there, maybe more. The noise was deafening. Primal, pain-filled shrieks mingled with the rapid and sustained firecracker explosions of automatic weapons. Some of the victims scrambled for cover, but most were dying on the quaint cobblestone street of downtown Hays.

  Sam pulled her behind a concrete pillar next to an empty ice cream parlor.

  “It’s plan B,” he said with a grin.

  “What plan B? Whose idea?”

  “Steven and Fergus came up with it. Just in case yours didn’t work.”

  She couldn’t decide whether to be elated or pissed off. “Why didn’t anyone tell me about it?”

  He took her bruised face gently between his hands and said, “Because you’re a bully, Dani.” He kissed her. “It’s okay though. I love you just the way you are. Anyway, they knew you would argue. It put more people at risk, but there were plenty of volunteers.”

  She started to object but realized that only proved his point. “Well, I suppose it’s a good thing they did. What do we do now?”

  “We stay out of the way until most of the guys are dead, then we’ll do a sweep through the town and take care of the rest. That’s what Steven said. You and I are supposed to wait here until someone brings us our guns.”

  Several minutes later, the cacophony tapered off, reduced now to single sniper shots rather than the battery of automatic rounds. Return fire came from the street, which meant some of the enemy still lived.

  Standing by, doing nothing, and missing all the action was almost more than she could take.

  Sam watched her, frowning.

  “Dani, please don’t. Somebody will be here any minute.”

  “I can’t stand it!”

  “You’re not ten foot tall and bullet proof.”

  He got another one right!

  She was so surprised, it stopped her from darting back into the fray. “Sam, are you okay?”

  “I’ll be a lot more okay if you don’t do something reckless.”

  She laughed. “All right, all right. But, what about the girls? Did plan B cover the part where somebody gets them the hell out of that shit hole?”

  “They figured they weren’t going anywhere, so they should be okay long enough to secure the town.”

  “What about the eastern and western barricades? There are at least a dozen more of those fuckers between the two of them.”

  “That part of the original plan is still in effect. We should be hearing the explosions any minute now.”

  “How did all the shooters get in place, Sam? We had to dodge a lot of security placing those bombs last night. How did they all just waltz into town during broad daylight?”

  “They waited for you to draw them away. Any of the enemy that stayed at their posts were to be taken out by our snipers. Steven has a couple of kids who are sharpshooters.”

  “So what the hell is the delay at the barricades?”

  The gunfire had diminished now to just an occasional pop-pop sound every few seconds, the last obstinate kernels of microwave popcorn.

  “I don’t know.” He glanced at his watch. “We should have heard them by now.”

  Just then, a thunderous explosion from the east of town jarred ear eardrums. She could feel the vibration in her bones.

  “Woo hoo! That Tung knows his stuff!”

  Sam didn’t share her enthusiasm. He was gazing back at all the bodies in the street.

  “Sam, they were horrible, vile, loathsome creatures. Every one of them. And the one you killed was the worst of the worst. He ran this despicable town. You did a good thing.”

  He nodded but didn’t speak.

  Thankfully, feeling remorse about killing bad guys wasn't something she had to wrangle with. She looked up to see a small, red-haired figure zigzagging toward them.

  “Over here!” she hollered from behind the concrete pillar. Fergus held Dani’s revolver and Sam’s shotgun as he ran.

  “Honey Badger, you are a sight for sore eyes,” he said with a grin. The next moment, the smile changed to a grimace of surprise. A hole, surrounded by a blossoming red stain, appeared on the front of his shirt.

  ###

  On the western outskirts of Hays, Pablo was close to panic. The vehicle containing one of the four Home Depot buckets wouldn’t start. He’d tied the steering wheel into place, leaving the tires pointing forward. A brick and a bungee cord on the passenger seat were ready to secure the gas pedal to the floorboard. But, stupidly, he’d turned off the engine while preparing the car for its suicide mission.

  “Come on!” he yelled. The Nissan Sentra sputtered but wouldn’t turn over. It was an o
lder model with a hundred thousand miles on the odometer, but had been functioning fine on the drive from Liberty.

  If he was a better shot or had possessed Bruce Lee skills like Dani and Sam, he wouldn’t be in this predicament. He’d been delegated the task of lighting the fertilizer bomb and setting the car in motion toward the western roadblock. Maddie had been the one to work out the logistics of how far away the car should be when the fuse was lit, and at what speed it should be going to make contact with the barricade at the precise moment the device detonated. Pablo knew her calculations were perfect. And since everyone else had volunteered or been recruited for other jobs, he’d been obligated to do this one. If he hadn’t offered, he would have looked like a shmuck.

  Not an option.

  His assignment required a cool head but no special skills other than to be able to inconspicuously roll out of the car once it got moving. But if it didn’t start, what the hell was he supposed to do?

  Through the windshield, he could see men with rifles standing around the roadblock a hundred yards ahead. So far they were just watching him, but they were alert.

  No explosion from the east yet, but it could happen at any moment. And if he didn’t get this piece-of-shit Nissan started, he would have failed, losing Maddie’s respect as well as the townspeople’s...also not an option since she had decided they would be staying.

  “Damn it.” He slammed a fist against the steering wheel.

  Something caught his eye in the rearview mirror. A white SUV was approaching at a crawl. Were these more bad guys or harmless travelers? He gave the key another twist in the ignition. The engine refused to cooperate.

  He glanced again at the mirror, opened the car door, and stepped out slowly. He walked toward the SUV, a Land Rover, with empty hands in the air. A man with dirty blond hair and a crazy grin emerged from the passenger side holding a rifle pointed at Pablo’s head.

  “Don’t shoot! I need to talk to you!”

  He heard the mechanical hum of the driver’s window. A woman with gray strands in her dark ponytail stuck her head out. “What’s going on here?”

  He peered back at the barricade. The guards hadn’t left their post, but all the firearms were in position now. He needed to act fast.