“Let’s get him up onto the dining room table,” Kate said, sweeping the items off the big table with one arm before yanking the tablecloth off with her free hand. “Susan!” she called out after her daughter, who was running to Nick’s door, “grab the big first aid kit from my room, please!”
She and Jack lifted Arthur and laid him down on the table.
“Must have been a powerful rifle to have got through this body armor,” Jack muttered. “Let’s get this bulletproof vest off and see how bad the damage is.”
He and Kate managed to get the bulletproof vest off and saw that Arthur had a large wound in his chest. The bullet had gone through his torso and lodged into the rear armor of the vest. Jack listened carefully to his brother’s breathing and then used a stethoscope from the kit Susan handed him to check Arthur’s heartbeat. Arthur’s breathing was ragged, but there was no sound or sign of blood in his lungs; that was a good sign, at least, but his heartbeat was very weak and growing progressively weaker.
“It looks like the bullet didn’t hit any major organs or arteries, but he’s lost a lot of blood,” Kate said, staring with horror at the big pool of blood on the floor. “Too much blood. He’s going to need a transfusion, or he won’t make it.”
“He and I have the same blood type,” Jack said. “Let’s get the entry and exit wounds stitched up and get the transfusion kit hooked up. We’ll get my blood into him.”
“He’s going to need a lot, Jack … more than you can give,” Kate said gravely. “You’ll be too weak to do anything for the rest of the day, perhaps even a few days. And we have enemies literally at the door…”
“If I don’t do this, my brother will die for sure,” Jack said. “I have to try, at least.”
Kate nodded, her expression severe. “Okay, okay. Let’s do this.”
While the others got into position to guard the doors, Kate and Jack cleaned and stitched up Arthur’s wounds, and then they hooked up the blood transfusion kit. Jack grunted and gritted his teeth as his wife stuck the needle into his veins and started slowly pumping his blood into his brother’s veins.
It didn’t take long for him to start feeling woozy, but he held fast, knowing that his brother’s life depended on receiving this blood from him. He only prayed that Mark and his men wouldn’t attack … but that prayer, it seemed, fell on deaf ears. Fifteen or twenty minutes after he began the blood transfusion, the booming crack of a gunshot echoed through the woods outside, accompanied simultaneously by the shattering of one of the living room windows as a bullet tore through it.
The projectile slammed harmlessly into one of the wooden pillars that supported the ceiling. Still, everyone hurled themselves flat onto the floor, realizing that a barrage of shots would surely follow this one.
A voice roared out from somewhere outside—a familiar voice, one that Kate, Jack, and Susan knew well—Mark. “Howdy, friends!” he shouted out mockingly. “Uncle Mark an’ his buddies have come to pay y’all a lil’ visit! We already done taken out ol’ Rambo there, an’ the rest a’ you motherfuckers is next! Not the lil’ ladies, though; we gon’ keep them bitches alive for some fun, the fun I didn’t get to have a couple of months back! You sons a bitches thought y’all could escape me, huh? Thought you could kill my buddies an’ get away with it? Nobody fucks with Mark McAllister an’ gets away with it, nobody! Y’all motherfuckers are about to pay!”
Jack lay on the ground and realized that he had a terrible choice to make. He could stop the transfusion now and let his brother die so that he still had enough strength to fight, or he could continue with the transfusion but get too weak to help his family, and pray that they could fend off Mark and his men … which would possibly result in all of them dying.
It was a horrendous choice to have to make, but he knew that it would have to be made … so he chose.
39
“I’m sorry, Arthur,” Jack whispered hoarsely as he gripped Kate’s wrist, signaling to her to stop pumping blood. “I know you’d understand why I have to do this.”
Kate helped him get the needle out of his vein, but more shots crashed through the windows, shattering them while they were doing that. Susan screamed, and Nick shouted out with both fear and anger, but nobody was hurt … yet. Outside, Mark howled with vicious laughter.
“They’re gonna be closing in soon,” Jack said, “and we don’t know how many of them are out there. We have to take the fight to them and buy ourselves a little time.” He tried to stand up but felt his head spin; he was woozy from blood loss. “Nick!” he yelled out, dropping back down to his knees, “get down to the cellar, there are a couple of grenades down there, and bulletproof vests, get enough for everyone!”
“I’m on it!” Nick shouted, racing across the living room, stooped down low to avoid the bullets that came crashing through the windows at increasingly regular intervals.
“Get back, everyone!” Jack said. “They’re concentrating their attack on the front of the cabin, and it’s only a matter of time before they try to storm it!”
“Where do we go, Dad?” Susan asked, her eyes wide with fright.
“I’m going to try to draw them in here, and on the north side of the house,” Jack said. “If I can keep their attention focused here, the rest of you can make a break for it out of the kitchen door. There’s good tree cover that way.”
Kate gasped with shock. “Jack, are you crazy? You can’t stay in here to fight them alone!”
“It’s the only chance we’ve got,” Jack said grimly. “And if you can get out of the cabin, up onto the ridge behind us, you’ll have the advantage of the higher ground; the boulders up there make excellent sniping spots where you’ll be able to get good clear shots at them from a position of cover. You, Susan, and Nick and my mother have to make a break for it.”
“What about you and Arthur? And your father?” Kate asked, ducking as another volley of gunshots crashed outside, sending bullets whizzing through the cabin, shattering glasses and smashing plates and slamming into the walls.
“We’ll get Arthur down into the cellar. It’s the only place he might be safe … if he even survives the damage the rifle shot did to him, which is not looking very likely right now,” Jack said grimly. “As for my father, I think he can speak for himself.”
Kenneth was holding Arthur’s AK-47 with a vice-tight grip and a look of sheer determination on his craggy face. “I may be slow and forgetful these days,” the old man said, “but I still remember how to shoot straight, and I’m not moving an inch from this cabin. I’m gonna take out as many of the bastards who did this to my boy as I can,” he said. “I might not live to see the sunset at the end of today, but if sacrificing my life to save everyone else’s is what it takes, then that’s what it takes. I’ve lived almost eighty years now, and the rest of you have your lives ahead of you. Let an old man die with courage in his heart and a rifle in his hand and consider mine a life well-lived.”
Kenneth’s wife, Elizabeth, burst into tears as her husband said this. She had been married to him for most of her life since they had been high school sweethearts, and she hadn’t imagined that their life together would come to an end in this way. She knew why Kenneth was offering to sacrifice himself, though, and also knew from six decades of living with him just how stubborn he was when it came to things like this. “You’re a true hero, Kenny,” she said tearfully, “and I couldn’t have spent my life with a better man. If you don’t make it out of here … I’ll see you on the other side, soon.”
“I love you with all my heart and soul, Lizzy,” Kenneth said. “But you already know that, don’t you? Go on, get out of here, all of you! My boy and I will hold the fort down, won’t we, son?”
Jack nodded. “We sure will, Dad. Kate, you’re in charge from now on. When you hear me and Dad laying down some heavy cover fire, get yourself out of the kitchen door and into the trees. Get up to those boulders on the ridge as quickly as you can and start taking these bastards out with some well-placed sniper shots fro
m up there. With some speed and luck, we can turn the tide of this fight.”
Another wave of bullets came crashing through the smashed-out windows, and everyone lay flat on the floor, breathing hard. “Everyone safe?” Jack called out.
Everyone replied that they were safe.
“All right, everyone, get to the kitchen!” Jack ordered.
At this point, Nick returned with a bunch of bulletproof vests and hand grenades taken from the cellar. Everyone put a vest on, and Jack and Kenneth took a bunch of grenades, while everyone else took one each.
“The pussies ain’t fightin’ back!” Mark roared from somewhere outside. He sounded as if he was closer to the cabin now than he had been earlier. “Close in boys, close in! Let’s get ‘em!”
His battle cry was answered by a roar of enthusiastic, aggressive cheers; from the sound of it, it seemed that there were at least ten to twelve attackers outside the cabin.
“Nick, Kate, get Arthur down to the cellar, then get out of here!” Jack said. He gave Kate a quick, tight hug and a kiss before she and Nick carried Arthur out of the room. Susan and Elizabeth followed them, leaving Kenneth and Jack alone in the living room.
“Looks like it’s just you and me now, Dad,” Jack said to Kenneth.
“Let’s give ‘em hell, son,” Kenneth growled. “These scumbags chased Lizzy and me out of our home, destroyed our town, murdered scores of innocent people, and shot my firstborn boy. Now it’s time for payback.”
“Before we do, Dad, I need to prepare a quick surprise for ‘em,” Jack said. “You see, I want them to come in here.”
“You what?”
Before Jack could answer, another volley of rifle shots crashed through the windows, smashing up more items inside the living room and showering the two men with a cloud of debris and porcelain shards.
“I’m not going to blindly throw these grenades out there and hope that they hit something,” Jack said, pointing to the pile of hand grenades. “We can use these to take at least half of the bastards out. I just need to mount them all around the living room, then hook up a single strand of fishing line to all the pins, which I’ll pull once they’re in here…”
Kenneth grinned as he realized what Jack’s plan was, and how devastatingly effective it would be if they could pull it off. “I’ll give ‘em a few shots to keep ‘em occupied and hold ‘em off while you get the grenades set up,” Kenneth said. “Then, we’ll pull back, and let the scumbags walk right into our trap.”
“First, we need to lay down some cover fire so that the others can escape. I just heard Kate and Nick running up the cellar stairs, so they must have gotten Arthur down there, and they’ll be ready to go. You take the window next to the front door; I’ll take the west window. As soon as the bastards have fired their next volley at us, we pop our heads up and give the sons of bitches hell. Keep firing until your mag is empty.”
“You don’t need to tell me twice,” Kenneth said, grinning. “I’m ready when you are.”
“Wait for the shots to come in, then I’ll give the signal,” Jack said.
Another couple of shots crackled from the woods outside the cabin, punching even more holes through the drapes, which looked like swiss cheese at this point, and then Jack knew it was time. “Go!” he yelled to his father. “Give ‘em hell!”
40
Jack popped his head up, ripping the drapes out of the way. Bright morning light came rushing into the gloomy living room, and he saw that Mark’s men had already started advancing across the stretch of open ground. They had grown overconfident, since no resistance had come from the cabin until this point, and there were six of them now caught in the open with no cover.
His first burst of automatic fire took the closest man in the chest, and before he had even fallen to the ground, limp and dead as a clubbed fish, Jack had swung his rifle on the next target and unleashed another burst of fire. Three rapidly fired bullets punched through the man’s torso, and the fourth snapped the man’s head back, blowing his skull open in a grisly spray of blood.
On the other side of the room, Kenneth was blazing away with the AK-47, laughing gleefully. He hadn’t felt this alive in years, and with his coke-bottle-thick glasses on, his sight was almost as clear as a much younger man’s, as was his aim. He spat out bullets at a terrifying rate from the AK, firing in fully automatic mode, cutting down two men in quick succession.
The other two who had been caught out in the open knew that their only hope of surviving was to fight back, so they dropped to the ground and opened fire on the cabin, spraying it with automatic fire from their own AR-15 rifles that they had looted from the dead.
Jack swung his rifle around, squeezing off several shots in rapid succession, but the targets the two men presented were much smaller now that they were lying down. The bullets he fired kicked up plumes of dirt and chunks of grass around them but did not hit them.
Also, Mark and the remaining three attackers opened fire from the cover of the trees, with Mark blazing away with the high-powered rifle he’d shot Arthur with: a mean and potent 50-caliber. Kenneth, caught up in the moment, roared out with fury and raised himself to his full height, spitting out the last of his AK-47 bullets. They sprayed across the bodies of the men on the grass, who yelped with brief pain as the bullets tore through their torsos, and then they fell silent, their hands slipping off their rifles as death took them.
Before either Jack or Kenneth could celebrate this small victory, though, a burst of AR-15 fire from one of the men in the woods sprayed across Kenneth’s torso, and he dropped the AK and staggered back, ripping the drapes from their rails as he fell heavily to the ground. A second later, one of the huge 50-caliber bullets from Mark’s rifle smashed through Jack’s lower left leg, and he stumbled and fell backward to the ground, dropping his gun and gasping as pain tore through his leg.
“Got you, motherfucker!” Mark shouted from the trees. “The next shot is gonna be through your guts, so you die slowly while you watch me an’ my boys have some good ol’ fun with your bitches!”
Gasping with pain, Jack pulled himself back into the cabin and closed the door. He could only hope that his and Kenneth’s burst of cover fire had given the others enough time to escape. From the sound of it, it had been successful in that regard. All the enemy fire had been concentrated on this section of the cabin, so Jack could only pray that the rest of his family had escaped.
He had been so caught up in his own fighting that he hadn’t noticed that Kenneth had been badly hit, but he heard his father’s raspy wheezing soon enough. Groaning, he turned around and crawled over to Kenneth, whose chest was a mess of blood where the bullets had smashed through his torso. The old man was coughing weakly, and blood was frothing at the corners of his mouth. Jack knew right away that he was at death’s door and that his life was beyond saving.
“I’m here, Dad, I’m here,” Jack said, gripping his father’s hand tightly in his own.
“You … shouldn’t be,” Kenneth wheezed, coughing. Despite the pain he was in, and the fact that he knew he was dying, the old man smiled. “Thank you … for letting … me … die like … a man,” he gasped. “But there’s … one more thing … I gotta do.”
“What is it, Dad?” Jack asked, his eyes rimmed with tears and his voice hoarse.
“Get outta here … son,” Kenneth wheezed, the light already fading from his eyes. “But give me … the grenade line … before you go.”
Now Jack understood what his father wanted. He would hold onto the line that would pull all the grenade pins simultaneously, and yank on it with the last of his strength when the invaders burst in.
“I love you, Dad,” Jack said, giving his father’s hand a tight squeeze. “Goodbye and thank you for everything … and give ‘em hell.” He pressed the fishing line into Kenneth’s hand and crawled on his hands and knees out of the room, dragging his shattered leg behind him. He heard Mark and his remaining men bellowing out shouts of triumph as they charged forward, thinking
that they would no longer meet any resistance in the cabin. Gasping and grunting with pain and exhaustion, he crawled down the stairs to the cellar, where he drew his pistol and waited for the explosion.
Just as he got halfway down the stairs, he heard the door burst open. He heard the sound of men yelling insults at his dying father, and then a few quick pistol shots. He fought back the tears, knowing that the three loud bangs he had heard had been his father’s death. He only hoped that the old man had managed to yank on the cord before they’d shot him.
He heard boots stamping excitedly through the living room … and suddenly an enormous explosion, like the sound of the earth itself splitting in half, tore through the cabin, blowing half of it to pieces, along with the men.
The force of the explosion boomed through the house and was enough to bowl Jack down the rest of the stairs and send the pistol flying out of his hands. He lay on the floor with the wind knocked out of his lungs, groaning. The explosion had been enormous and had to have killed everyone in or close to the living room. Jack listened with bated breath, seeing if he could discern the sound of any living enemies, but all he could hear was a shrill whining in his ears.
He wasn’t sure how long he lay there, with his destroyed leg throbbing, his strength and life slowly bleeding away, and his ears ringing, but after some time, he heard the sound of footsteps coming through the cabin. Whoever it was limped heavily, gasping and coughing, and sounded as if they were badly injured.
Jack had a feeling he knew exactly who it was, and, gritting his teeth, he heaved himself up onto his hands and knees, desperately searching for his pistol in the thick gloom of the cellar. And behind him, he heard the footsteps stop and turn, and then they came lumbering down the cellar steps, and the sound of coughing and ragged breathing grew louder and more ominous with every footfall.
“You thought you could … take ol’ Mark McAllister out … with a cheap trick like that, asshole?” Mark growled, dark blood dripping from his lips and running down his throat, with half of his face ripped off from the force of the blast. In each hand, he held a long hunting knife, and although he was stumbling with every step he took, there was still plenty of strength in his veins. “I’m gon’ skin you … like I did that mountain lion,” Mark growled.
Survive the Day Boxset: EMP Survival in a Powerless World Page 73
