by Connor Mccoy
Courtney piped up. “Okay, so what if they get out and walk to the house?” She wiggled her fingers like walking legs. “They can do that. You’re just going to piss them off by making them walk a little farther.”
“That’s a good point,” Jacob said. “But blocking the road gives us a tactical advantage. They can’t just drive up to our front door and unload a raiding party. If they have to stop, we can see them come out, see how they’re going to approach our land. It gives us time to stop them before they can reach the house.”
“But what if they leave and go around the other way?” Jubilee asked.
Domino turned to her daughter. “What do you mean?”
“Well, when I got hurt, you all drove me out to the back road, remember? Does Sykes know where that is? Wouldn’t he just go around the trees?” Jubilee replied.
It seemed possible. After Jubilee was hit with the arrow, Jacob was prepared to take her to Sheryl’s hospital, but that was when Alex Cowell made his appearance. Jacob did not want to run into the social worker given his daughter’s injury, so he drove the truck through a gate in his back fence onto a dirt road that led to the state road.
“There are some trees around there we could fell, probably block the gate, but Sykes still could crash through the fence somewhere if he really wanted,” Jacob said. “There’s no way I can surround my whole fence with tree limbs in time.”
Brandon’s smile grew. “Hey! I’ve got an idea!”
Jacob leaned closer to listen.
Once the meeting broke up, Jacob turned his attention to Sheryl, who was walking toward Arnie, who continued happily coloring in his coloring book. His sister seemed like she had a lot on her mind. Jacob couldn’t blame her.
“War’s not exactly the happiest subject on the planet,” Jacob said.
Sheryl sighed. “No kidding.” She leaned against the wall, still watching Arnie coloring.
“I didn’t want to say it out there. You probably are going to be pissed at me. But I don’t think this place is worth dying for.”
Tilting a tad to Jacob, she added, “All we have left is each other. If this Jimmy Sykes is so crazy that he’d shoot you to get this house, why not just run? I know you put a lot into this place, but God.” She shook her head. “We’ve lost so much already. Are we going to lose each other, too?”
Jacob hovered over Sheryl. “Tell you the truth, I thought a little about running away, taking the family to Skylar. Maybe I should think about it a little more. I just realized how crazy this is.” He chuckled a little before going on.
“I guess it just boils down to what I want to fight for. This is my home. It’s been a haven for my family. It’s strong enough that it can support you and anyone else I want to take on board until the end of our lives.”
After a brief pause, Jacob continued. “But that doesn’t mean you have to be in the middle of this. In fact, I think you should leave until this fight with Sykes is over. I want you to take Courtney and Arnie to Skylar. I’d really like you to take Jubilee and Brandon, but I get the feeling making them leave isn’t going to be easy.”
Sheryl didn’t seem enthusiastic about the suggestion. “Don’t get me wrong. I don’t like the idea of getting into a gun fight, but I can’t leave you to face that madman. Is it going to be just you and Domino and maybe even the kids against Sykes and his gang?”
She shook her head. “No. No, there’s no way I can just go up and leave.”
“Sheryl, I wouldn’t ask you to do this,” Jacob said gently.
“I know. But if you die…” Sheryl winced. “At this point, I don’t think I can survive without, without you. I can’t make it alone. I don’t know this world. I don’t know how anything works.”
Jacob reached out to embrace her. Sheryl sank into his arms. “It’s going to be tough,” Jacob said, “but we can get through this. You made it so far without me being by your side. I think you’re a little tougher than you might think you are.”
Sheryl giggled. “Thank you.”
Jacob looked past Sheryl to Arnie. “But we do have to do something with Arnie and Courtney. Arnie, particularly. There’s no way we can have him fight with us.”
Putting the mentally challenged man into the middle of a gun fight would be an act of sheer cruelty. They somehow had to take Arnie out of the fight.
“Can we put him somewhere safe? I mean, is there going to be any place safe when the fight starts?” Sheryl asked.
Jacob gave it some thought. Where could they put him? In fact, what were they going to do with Courtney as well? Courtney could leave if she wanted, but where would she go? She was just an ordinary girl with no outdoor training. They would have to accompany her somewhere if she was to seek safe haven, and Jacob didn’t think they could do that before Sykes returned to the farm.
He pondered that problem as he looked up to his ceiling. Then an idea hit him.
Jacob lowered the attic door and the accompanying wooden steps. He was greeted with a huff of hot air, though not as much as he expected. He had made sure the attic was well ventilated to reduce the risk of papers bursting into flames during hot weather.
Sheryl and Courtney backed up to avoid the steps. Jacob waved a hand in front of his face to blow away some of the hot air. “Here we go.”
Turning to Courtney, he said, “A little place to put you and Arnie up when the you-know-what hits the fan. Hopefully, you two won’t have to stay up here for too long.”
Jacob climbed up into the attic. “Just as I left her.”
To his relief, it was much more spacious than he remembered. The add-ons he had built onto his house, including the den, allowed him to space out his belongings. As a result, the attic floor was clear enough that someone could sleep up here if that person wished. It easily could hold Courtney and Arnie for a while.
Courtney and Sheryl accompanied Jacob into the attic. Courtney promptly sneezed. “Bless you,” Sheryl said.
After wiping her nose, Courtney said, “I hate to bring this up, but if Sykes’s squad of psychos breaks into the house, they can come up here, too.”
“It won’t be so easy once I stick a lock on that door,” Jacob said. “They can pull on the drawstring, but it won’t come down.”
“But they can shoot their way in,” Courtney added.
Jacob sighed. “Believe me, I’m not saying this is foolproof. I just have to keep you and Arnie out of the fighting until we take them all down.” He looked at Courtney and saw the doubt in her eyes.
“I’m not saying you have to do this. I just don’t think we can escort you to another town before Sykes shows up.” Scratching his face, Jacob said, “There might be another choice. I could station you and Arnie off my land, somewhere in the woods. You could wait there instead until we come and get you. Hiding up here could be risky. There’s no way to escape if Sykes and his men should take the house.”
Courtney fished her hands into her pant pockets. “Cheery.”
“It’s up to you. If I put you and Arnie out in the woods, Sykes and his men might spot you, but you also could run away if necessary,” Jacob said.
Courtney walked up to one of the ceiling beams. Jacob tried to guess what she might be thinking. She seemed torn between the choices. Jacob wished he knew the correct approach to keep this girl and Arnie Lerner safe from harm.
“It feels nicer, safer in here.” Courtney orbited the beam. “The woods? I don’t know.” She turned to Jacob. “Can I, I don’t know, try it out first?”
Jacob watched Courtney spin around in a circle. He and the teen, plus Sheryl, hiked out to the thicket of trees just beyond the Avery property line. Jacob got an idea when Courtney asked to “try it out.” She immediately backtracked, thinking she had said something stupid, but Jacob figured putting Courtney out here to experience the scenery would help her out.
“What do you think?” Jacob asked. “It certainly smells better out here.”
Courtney backed up against a tree. “I don’t know. You guys are stil
l with me. Can you walk behind that tree for a moment?”
Jacob understood. She wanted to simulate how it would feel to be alone. He and Sheryl slipped behind the tree.
Sheryl opened her mouth to speak, but Jacob put a finger to his lips. Speaking would give away their presence. Jacob wanted Courtney to feel totally alone.
The two siblings waited for a few minutes. Finally, Courtney piped up. “Okay Mister and Miss Avery! Please come out!”
Jacob and Sheryl revealed themselves. Courtney was holding her arms, swaying her legs back and forth. “I think I’m done. The woods are nice but it’s really, really creepy without anyone to talk to out here. I mean, I know Arnie would be with me, but he’s, you know.”
“Right.” Jacob approached Courtney. “It’s fine. The attic it is?”
Courtney nodded. “Yeah.”
As the trio started back toward the house, Sheryl whispered, “Are you just going to keep those two in the attic alone? What if they need help?”
Jacob had considered that problem. He didn’t want to spare Domino or Sheryl, though. Who could he station with them?
Brandon, seated on his bed, eyed his father. “You want me to stay up in the attic with Courtney?”
“Courtney and Arnie,” Jacob said.
“Yeah, yeah, right. But I don’t get to help fight Sykes. I just have to hang around Courtney until it’s all over,” Brandon said.
Jacob worried that Brandon might not go along with this. Still, he seemed like the right choice. It also gave Jacob a way to keep one of his kids out of the fighting. He would have liked to put Jubilee up there as well, but her shooting skills were too valuable to pass up.
But instead of arguing, Brandon leaped from his bed. “I’ll do it!”
He’ll do it? Well, this was easy, Jacob thought. But why…
Jacob suddenly understood why Brandon was so eager to go along with it.
Chapter Seventeen
Sheryl rubbed her eyes. She had been keeping a lookout through the eyepiece for the past half hour, or so it seemed. Without the use of watches, keeping time was almost purely a matter of guessing. If it wasn’t for Brandon and Jubilee teaching Sheryl about keeping track of time through the positions of the sun, Sheryl felt she would be totally lost until the sun started to set.
She and Brandon had taken up a position on a hill in the forest. It was a short hike northwest of the Avery homestead. Jacob had performed some geographical scouting of the area some years before and even had a topographical map on hand. He figured this would be the best place to scout the road for signs of Sykes’s approach.
The setup was ingenious. Coming into the immediate vicinity of the Avery house, the road slightly swerved, like a snake, so at one point it actually would bend in the opposite direction before looping around to run by the Avery farm. From this high point in the woods, it was possible to keep watch on that opposite direction the road took.
That was where Jacob’s scope came in handy. It was the most advanced telescope Jacob possessed that did not require electronics to make it work. Its lens allowed him to see all the way through the trees to the road, though the final image was somewhat blurry. But it did not matter. The size of Sykes’s truck would make it visible even if it came off as a weird moving blob.
I’m keeping watch for an armed band of men, she thought with slight amusement. It was getting harder to be afraid of what could happen. It was as if she finally was getting used to this crazy new life of hers.
She patted her camouflage print pants. They still smelled like the house attic. Domino’s thin frame made her a few sizes smaller than Sheryl, so Jacob and Domino had to go up into the attic to find Domino’s clothes from back when she had gained some weight. They were the only ones that could fit Sheryl.
Sheryl wiped sweat off her arms. At this rate, I’ll drop enough weight to fit into Domino’s stuff with no problem.
She thought about asking Brandon about wildlife delicacies again. However, Brandon’s sudden cry put a stop to such ideas.
“Hey! I see the truck! It’s coming! It just passed!”
The boy pulled away from the scope. Sheryl didn’t need to look through it. The truck would be gone from sight by now. She grabbed the telescope and the tripod on which it stood.
“Start peeling rubber, Brandon.” Sheryl started running down the hill. “We’ve got to sound the alarm.”
Sykes pushed on the play button. The cabin of the delivery truck promptly filled with the guitar strings and vocals of The Rolling Stones. Sykes sang the lyrics to “Beast of Burden” as the song played.
He had prepared his trucks well for the EMP. He had packed away some old cassette players in a Faraday cage that could block electromagnetic waves. After the EMP hit, Sykes had made sure they were installed in his trucks so he could play his collection of cassette tapes.
With soft air blowing on him from the air conditioning vent, Sykes felt he was on top of the world. Who else had it as good as he did right now? Here he was, riding down this Virginia road, being driven by one of his men, on his way to the Avery house to collect his due. Previously, he successfully had raided a gas station of its fuel supply. Every last drop of it would serve his truck fleet.
The idea that things could go wrong was the farthest thing from his mind. So, it jolted him when his driver suddenly put on the brakes.
“Mallory?” Sykes blinked his eyes, refocusing on the here and now. “Why did you stop?”
Mallory looked ahead as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “The road. There’s a bunch of trees just laying across it.”
Lying across it, not laying. But Sykes didn’t care to correct Mallory’s grammar. He looked through the windshield. Sure enough, he thought he spotted rows of tree trunks strewn across the asphalt. To make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him, he rolled down the window and stuck his head out.
“Son of a bitch! There’s got to be several trunks. There’s no way they just fell over like that. Someone moved them there.” Sykes was dumbfounded. Who in the world would block the road like this?
Sykes turned to the back seat of the cab. “Unload everyone. Let’s see if we can find a way around that shit out there.”
Jacob, seated up in the tree, watched Sykes and his men disembark the truck. There were ten in all. Sykes pointed to the blockade. “God damn!” he said.
The men fanned out into two groups on either side of the fallen trees. “Sykes!” called a thin man in a dirty T-shirt. “We can’t fit the truck through here. The trees are too close together!”
That’s how I planned it, Jacob thought with some satisfaction. He knew Sykes would try to drive around the blockade if he could, so Jacob and his family pulled the trees to points in the surrounding woods where a vehicle like Jacob’s could not get through.
Sykes rejoined two of his men. “Now, why in God’s name would someone block this road?” he asked them.
“Who’d go through the trouble? It’s still what, twenty minutes to the next town? The only thing close by is that ranch where we dropped off our little family, and I don’t think Guy suddenly developed a sick sense of humor.”
He pointed to his remaining henchmen. “Grab some guns. We’re headed to that homestead. I don’t believe for a minute that Guy and Terri don’t know what the shit is going on.”
So, they are going to try hiking around the trees? Jacob looked to his wife, who was seated in a tree across the road. A confrontation was inevitable. It was time to reveal themselves.
“That’s far enough, Sykes!” Jacob shouted, pointing his gun below. “You’re not coming any closer to my house!”
The men below cocked their heads upward, some shouting a few expletives. Sykes kept silent as he turned in Jacob’s direction. “Ah. So, this little blockade, this is your doing?”
“Yeah. Practically kicked the shit out of me to haul this wood here but it was worth it,” Jacob said.
“Not exactly a neighborly way to greet a fellow, is it?” Sykes as
ked.
“It wasn’t exactly neighborly to take a man’s house away from him,” Jacob retorted.
Sykes’s mouth dropped open. “So, you own that little farm out there! My God!” The surprise in Sykes’s voice hardly sounded authentic to Jacob’s ears. “Well, I’m glad you made it back. I had no earthly idea the people who owned that farm were still alive.”
I bet, Jacob thought.
“How about you come on down and tell me how you made it back?” Sykes asked.
“No, thanks,” Jacob replied coldly. “Let’s just say I don’t quite trust you.”
“Why’s that? I don’t mean anyone any harm. Oh, you’re mad because I let that sweet little family live on your property.” Sykes laughed. “I didn’t think anyone was coming back. If you want an apology, you got it. By the way, I assume you’ve met Guy and Terri. Where are they? I’d like to see them.”
“I sent them on their way,” Jacob said. “You’re dealing with me now. I’m the king of this castle, and I’ve just pulled up the drawbridge. You’re not getting anything from my farm, so you can turn around and go back to wherever the hell you came from.”
Sykes laughed. The man was trying to sound good natured, but Jacob could detect the animus in his voice. “Sir, I don’t know who you take me for,” Sykes said. “I’m just an honest businessman. I run a born and bred Virginia delivery company. As you can tell, I have a fully functional delivery truck.”
“Yeah, a truck that runs on gas you’ve been stealing!” Jacob cried out.
“Stealing?” Sykes put his hand on his chest as if he was emotionally wounded.
“That’s right. Remember Doc Sam’s place? You had Alex Cowell go in and rob his garage of a couple of gas cans! Your sons of bitches then shot at my wife while Cowell made off with the fuel!” Jacob shouted.
Sykes glanced at one of his men, who told him something. His voice was too quiet for Sykes to hear. Sykes nodded, then turned back to Jacob. “So, that woman on Sam’s land, that was your gal? Well, I can see why this is one hell of an awkward meeting.”
