by Lou Cadle
“Mom’s a good teacher. When autumn comes, you’ll see.”
“She’ll teach me too?”
“You won’t be able to avoid it, not even if you want.”
“I like learning. I’m learning a lot here. Like about rabbits and chickens.”
“And shooting.”
“Yeah.” He sounded less enthusiastic about it than he had about the animals.
“You have to know how to defend yourself and the animals. People came here and stole hens. People from Payson, people from Phoenix both. They’d tear through our gardens too, if we let them. We need the animals to eat, and so when you shoot to drive off invaders, you protect your food. You’ve had the experience of hunger?”
Rudy said, “Yes,” in a small voice. “I’ve been very hungry. It hurts. And it makes it so that food is all you can think about. And it makes a day last forever.”
“Then remember that as you learn to shoot. You’re defending your own belly against feeling that way again. Right?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“What’s wrong?”
He was silent for a long time—a long time for Rudy. One minute, at least. “I don’t like the idea of shooting anyone.”
Dev stopped walking and faced the boy. “No one likes the idea. We do what has to be done.”
“I saw Oliver get shot.”
Dev could see he wanted to say something else, so he waited for it.
“Everyone you shoot might have someone who loves them.”
“Everyone I shoot is doing something bad. Oliver was different. He was just defending himself—and you. The others started it, right?”
Rudy nodded.
“If they cared about their loved ones being sad when they died, they’d think twice about coming up here and trying to hurt us or steal from us. We’re just sitting at home, minding our own business. You didn’t ask those people to come up and shoot Oliver.”
“It wasn’t really our home, where Oliver and me were. Maybe those other people had as much right to it as anyone.”
“They didn’t know that. They believed it was yours,” Dev said.
“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“They knew what they were doing, and they knew it was wrong.”
“I guess that’s so.”
“We’re not running around shooting people at random. In fact, I’ve only shot one person who didn’t come up here and try to shoot me first.”
“Who was that?”
“A guy in Payson. He was doing something very wrong.” Dev didn’t feel comfortable explaining exactly what the man had been doing. He felt, oddly, like protecting Rudy from that reality. Besides, who knew what the kid knew about sex. Dev for sure didn’t want to be the one giving him that part of his education. “Let’s go back. It’s almost lunchtime. And then I have guard duty.”
They made for their road and waved to Curt, who was at the log, checking the road. They’d barely made it up the driveway when Curt blew the whistle.
The signal for danger.
Chapter 19
“Go. Find my dad, and do whatever he tells you to do.” Rudy seemed rooted to the spot, so Dev gave him a push on the shoulder. Then he turned for the road, reaching it at his driveway and meeting Curt running back.
“Cars coming. A line of them. At least a half-dozen.”
“Damn it. Okay, I’ll go back to the right. You take the left side. You have the plug-in for the phone?”
“Yeah. I texted Sierra already, in case she didn’t hear the signal. She’ll get Joan.” They’d worked all this out as soon as they’d brought Rudy and his walkie-talkie device home. “Go,” Curt said.
Dev went. First, back up his driveway, whistling the “friend” signal, and into the shed. He spun the lock on the ammunition case back and forth, fast and accurate. It popped open and he pulled down three magazines for his rifle and a box of rounds, cramming them into his jeans pocket, wishing for his vest but not taking the time to get it. Shut the cabinet, spin the lock, and he was off again, past the house. His father had left the ladder up.
The sight of it slowed him. Should he take it down?
His father’s voice came softly from above him. From the roof, in fact. “Firing prone is easier for me. I’ll do it from up here.”
It wasn’t a bad place to shoot from. The solar panels, up off the roof a few inches, were laid so that there was a path between every two rows, so you could clean, repair, and replace them. His father would fit snugly with his rifle, and the panels themselves would disguise him.
“There’s several cars, Curt said,” he told his father. Dev took off at a trot past the rabbit hutches.
He thought as he ran. Were these the people from Payson? Or was this another group? Maybe they’d torn through Payson and defeated that threat, only to become a bigger threat. If it was the Payson invaders, and there were only forty or fifty, even with collaborators, they’d have to leave people behind to hold the town against rebellion by the townsfolk. That left twenty or twenty-five they might risk to come up here.
With everyone healthy, they could deal with twenty. He had faith in their ability to fend off that size threat. With his father and Pilar both less than healthy, it would be damned hard to fight them off.
Dev hurdled the tripwire and kept running up to the high spot with the best view. It also had a steep run up to it from the road, and they wouldn’t likely pick there to enter the neighborhood.
And if they did, he could pick them off.
He slowed down as he approached it. The trees thinned out here, and cover was sparse. The last five yards he did on his belly.
There were eight cars uphill of them at a dead stop. No movement of people around them. Must have just halted. Dev checked to his right. He didn’t want to be surprised by someone on foot coming up from that way. For now, it was clear.
The last car’s doors swung open, all of them but the driver’s door, at once. Three armed men stepped out. One was older—older than Dev’s father even—but the other two looked to be in their twenties, fit, broad-shouldered. The old guy was wearing camouflage gear, which wasn’t camouflaging him at all against a baby blue sedan. Through the scope he saw tattoos running up the arms and onto the neck of one of them. All had rifles.
They stood there talking, and Dev thought about taking a shot now. But maybe they had no idea the neighborhood was there. Not likely, but possible.
Better to stay quiet for now. If Curt fired, he’d fire. If the men outside the car made an aggressive move, he’d fire.
Then one of them pointed. At their road. Shit.
They must have had some means of communication, for the doors to all the cars started to swing open one by one. Dev steadied the rifle, took a breath, let it half out, and fired at the man with the fatigues who was standing on the far side of the car, a head shot.
One man down.
Curt opened fire from far to his left at the same time Dev fired his second shot. Another man down.
The third man, on this side of the car, had hit the ground. But he was still right there. Idiot. Dev fired again, just as the man moved his arm. He took the round in the moving arm. Maybe the bone deflected it, for he didn’t seem to have taken a secondary hit to the body. Not one that was slowing him down at all.
The man couldn’t fire his weapon accurately now, but that wasn’t good enough. As the man scrambled to get back into the car, Dev fired again, hitting him in the low back. Kidney, if he was lucky. He’d hurt. He might even die, unless they’d brought a surgeon with them. He doubted they had.
As Dev was trying to get a broader view of what was happening, he heard a quiet hiss, as if Curt may have clipped a tire and air was escaping. But then, on the heels of that, came an explosion.
What the—?
Dev looked down the line of cars and he wasn’t sure what surprised him more: That each of the other cars had disgorged not all fighting men, but two men and two kids each? Or that a man at the front of the line of cars ha
d what Dev believed to be a grenade launcher attached to his rifle? He’d only seem them in pictures before this. That was what the explosion had been.
As Dev tried to work out what the hell was going on with the kids, a few of whom were struggling to get away, one man pointed at him and the man with the grenade launcher swung it his way. Uh-oh.
Dev rolled, scrambled back, and then got to his feet and ran for all he was worth. Behind him, another explosion split the air. But they hadn’t come close to his position.
Still. That weapon was a game-changer.
He wished he knew more about grenade launchers. They were strictly regulated, and his father hadn’t been able to get a hold of one, though Dev had heard him ask about that, rocket launchers, and more in private conversations at gun shows. He’d also heard him grumble to his mom that he hadn’t accumulated more weapons back when it was easier.
Okay, calm down. What does it do that rifles can’t do? Throw a lot of wood and dirt around. Deafen you. Blind you. Blow you to bits, as was its design, but they’d have to find you first. And right now, Dev was making himself damned hard to find, sprinting between the trees, heading at an angle back toward his house.
That wasn’t his destination though. There was a spider hole. Where? Right near here. Dev spun around, looking for it. There! He saw a newly fallen pine branch, still mostly green, and snatched it up, then ran to the spider hole. He put his rifle on the ground, lay the pine branch next to it, and levered himself down into the hole with his forearms. His boots reached the bottom and he let go.
Standing, his head easily cleared ground level. There wasn’t a lot of room in there, just enough to squat low enough to drop his head out of sight. He adjusted the pine branch so it provided a little extra cover to his left, where he thought it would be more likely they might appear from. Then he took up his rifle and waited.
Waiting was hard. There was a chance that no one would appear, that he’d be hiding here and all the action would break out elsewhere. If so, he could always get up, out, and start running. But his father had chosen this spot well. If anyone came through the woods within forty or fifty yards of here, he’d see it.
He’d stop it.
As he waited, he had a moment to think back to what he’d seen on the road. For a terrible second, he had thought that the kids were there as a sign of peace. Hey, just us, your neighbors, bringing the kids to meet you. But that’s not what had been happening. For one thing, every man by the cars had been just that: a man. No women were present. That said something.
For another thing, the struggling kids. The others had seemed—what? Scared, numb, obedient. But a couple of them had been squirming around. One had been in the grip of a man. Another had his arm snatched up and shaken just as Dev was scanning the line of cars.
It had to be that they were using the kids as human shields. Thinking we wouldn’t shoot at them, that we’d hesitate with a kid in the way.
Dev closed his eyes for a second to bring back the visual again. Huh. If that was their plan, they should have picked taller kids. Especially having the higher ground, he could have shot every man he saw in the head without risking one child. He tried to imagine what had happened in town—for surely this was coming from Payson—when the invaders had taken away the children. Of course, the men were all in jail. He might not know a lot of mothers, but he knew his own, and she’d have bitten the face off anyone who had tried to kidnap him at that age.
Maybe they had. Had tried to protect their children but died for their trouble.
Or maybe...Dev hadn’t really thought about it until now. But maybe, with over half of Payson’s population dead, maybe these were all orphans. Kids with no one to fight for them.
At least a couple of them still had the gumption to fight for themselves.
Another grenade exploded, down by the road. No return gunfire. Either Curt was dead or biding his time. Dev debated. Go down there? Was there a spider hole closer to the road? Yeah, there was. Shallower than this one, as he recalled because the rocks had kept them from digging deeper.
But just then, he heard a sound ahead and to his right, at two o’clock. A child’s voice. Not words. A sound of complaint. He mentally thanked the kid for warning him.
Dev pulled the pine limb around so that it was between him and that voice. Then he quietly moved his rifle up to shooting position. He took a deep breath and released it to calm himself, and focused. Don’t think about that kid. Don’t think about the grenade launcher out there somewhere, or his parents back at the house, or anything else. Just listen to these small sounds and watch the woods. When it’s time, focus on nothing in the world but the one best shot. Then take it.
The man came in low, hunkered down behind a boy, maybe nine years old. It took a second for him to see it, but the kid was tethered to him with a rope. Dev could see this wasn’t going to be easy. He didn’t have a clear shot from down here. Too low an angle.
It would be better to let the man pass him, turn around, and get him from the back—head shot again, missing the kid. Dev kept his breathing slow and quiet, tracking their movement.
Then he heard a twig snap off to his left. Damn. Another one.
Everything around Dev slowed down. He could feel the heat of his rifle stock where he’d been gripping it, a slow drop of sweat running down his neck. His own breath sounded like a hard wind blowing through the pines. Another snap to the left. He kept his focus on the man to his right, not allowing himself to let his concentration be split. The boy stumbled and a hand shot out to the rope to keep him from falling. Another six feet, and he’d have a shot.
The sounds from his left were farther away but getting closer. If he turned his head to the left to look, he risked losing a perfect shot here. And he risked being spotted if he moved even that much. The man and kid were close now. They closed to four yards. Almost. Almost. The kid stumbled again, fell to his knees, and Dev fired.
He’d hit the man but not with a kill shot. The kid screamed. The man cursed, his focus off the child, and turned toward Dev, who lifted the barrel of his rifle an inch and shot the man in his chest. He crumpled.
Gunfire erupted from his left. “Kid, stay down!” he said, as he dropped down himself. No reason to be quiet now. The other one obviously knew where he was. Not about the spider hole—that was still Dev’s advantage—but his approximate location.
The boy was whimpering. Hit? Or just scared? Dev couldn’t move to find out. He was pinned down. The rifle firing to his left was on three-shot bursts. His pine branch was hit and he could feel the rain of wood and needles over his head. But then the shots moved on. The shooter didn’t know precisely where he was. Another advantage Dev would exploit.
Wait.... Wait. Silence, and the sound of a magazine being inserted. Dev raised his rifle just above ground level and fired without looking, aiming high, not wanting to hit another kid. The kid to his right screamed again. That was good. He was still alive, at least. Terrified, but breathing.
Dev snatched his rifle back down. The next burst of three came closer. The man had him now, knew exactly where he was, if not about the spider hole.
Okay, okay. Stay calm. He can’t get me through dirt. He’ll have to come closer to get me. I’ll hear him approach. If he comes closer, I have as good a chance as he has. Better.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that.
Dev hadn’t been praying much lately, but he sent up a prayer now: Save me, save my family, save these little kids. He backed up his prayer by ejecting his magazine and loading a fresh one. God helps those who help themselves.
“Hey, wait!” The shooter. “Damn you.”
Dev took his chance. He popped up over the lip of the spider hole, rifle raised, and fired, blindly the first time, hoping he wouldn’t hit the kid. But the kid had gotten himself loose and was on the run, crashing through the forest. The shooter turned back to Dev, and Dev unloaded three rounds into his chest. He fell.
Dev pulled himself out of the spider hole and turn
ed for the other kid, who was on his face in the pine needles. Shit. Dev went to his side and touched his shoulder, meaning to flip him over to see what damage had been done. But the instant he applied pressure, the kid yelped.
“It’s okay. I’m a good guy,” Dev said.
“Don’t shoot me!” he said.
“I won’t.” He worked at the knots holding the kid to the body. “Here, I need you to do something for me.”
“What?” The kid raised a tear-streaked, filthy face to him.
“I need you to hide. Like hide and seek. And you stay there until I call come in free.” He tore at the knots in the rope, finally getting one end to move.
“Where?”
“I’ll show you. Be quick, now.” The knot came loose.
Dev led the kid to the spider hole. “It’s a great hiding place. I’ll even put branches over it so no one can see you, okay?”
“Will it be dark?”
“No.”
“Where’s my mom?”
“I don’t know. Did she come in the car?”
He shook his head.
“Back home, I bet. Wanting to hear you’re okay. So let’s make sure you are.” Dev slung his rifle over his shoulder and reached out both hands. “I’ll lower you in.”
“What if I can’t climb out?”
“I’ll come back for you. Stay put until I do, okay? There are bad men around.”
The kid looked doubtful. But when another grenade exploded down by the road, that decided him. He reached for Dev’s hands, and Dev gripped him under the arms and lowered him into the spider hole. He had to drop him the last foot, but he warned the kid he was going to, and he landed well.
“Wait,” the kid said, as Dev turned away.
“What?”
“I have to pee.”
“Go ahead. No one will be watching.”
“In here?”
“Sure,” Dev said. “Stay put. Don’t worry if you hear another shot in a second.” That was in case he needed to finish either of the two attackers with a head shot. He checked both of the men he had shot. Both dead. He took their rifles and slung them over his shoulder, hoping he wouldn’t be called on to fire at anyone before he dumped them. They unbalanced him.
