Lucas jumped up and hurried to the fire. Willy got to his feet and followed. “It’s going to be a long night,” he said under his breath.
Lucas used a piece of the wood to break the fire up, scattering glowing embers and half-burnt wood across the fire pit area. He grimaced as sparks flew high into the air and began kicking dirt onto it. Willy used the shovel to add more dirt. They worked until they had smothered the life out of it.
Charlie gathered everyone else where the girls still sat on their sleeping bag. He nodded at the smokehouse, “Sierra, can you help Evelyn take the meat out and set it somewhere to cool? We need to pack everything we don’t have an immediate need for, and we need to do it quietly.”
“Matt, as soon as they have it empty, you and Lucas smother that fire too. Right now, we don’t know if whoever is out there has seen us, but we don’t need a beacon to show them the way here. Girls, put lead lines on all the horses we have a rope for, and tie them up. Make sure you have at least Bess, Joe, and Clyde. They seem to be the ones the others follow.”
When everyone had their duties lined out, Willy, Joe, Kenny, and Charlie walked away from their camp, up the slope to where the adults had been sitting. As one they turned back to see how visible they were. Unless someone was on the hill looking down, as they had been earlier, their camp was invisible. They could hear the soft murmur of voices, but couldn’t make out individual people.
“Without the fires, you’d never know we’re here,” Joe said.
Charlie sniffed the air, “but you can sure smell the cooked meat. In our world without the smell of car exhaust and common odors, the smell of food could lead someone right to us.”
“I don’t like the idea that one of those guys could get curious and follow the smell right to us. We’re going to pair either Abby or Lucas with whoever is standing guard, I want to be assured that we hear them coming.” Willy turned to walk back down the hill, “I want to leave at first light.”
Charlie explained to Abby and Lucas what he needed from them and instructed everyone else to get some sleep.
Joe and Lucas pulled the first shift with instructions to wake Abby and Charlie after a couple of hours or if either one of them got sleepy.
Willy gave the Keltec to Joe, who looked at it and handed it to Lucas. “He knows it better than I do.”
Lucas nodded in agreement and gave Joe his Glock. The two went back to the top of the slope. They dropped over the rim so they wouldn’t be silhouetted on the top and sat down. Lucas placed the rifle across his lap and waited.
They sat in silence until Lucas placed his hand on Joe’s arm. “Do you hear that?”
Joe cocked his head and listened. After a few minutes of nothing but the sounds of their own breathing, “I don’t hear anything. What is it?”
“I heard at least one but maybe two motors. They’re a long way off, like maybe back at the cave.”
“That’s kind of far for you to hear them, isn’t it?”
“How far do you think it is back to the cave?”
Joe chuckled, “Ten miles?”
“Ten miles,” Lucas scoffed. “We didn’t make it more than three miles before we had to stop and then Ben showed up.”
“That’s still too far away to hear them from.”
“Maybe for your ears, but Abby and I both heard the motors. With the absence of mechanized sounds, the motors stand out above everything.”
Lucas felt Joe stiffen, “Okay,” he breathed out. “I hear them.”
Lucas nodded, knowing Joe couldn’t see him. He didn’t understand how the guy hadn’t heard the motors long before then. He and Abby had both heard them, but they had spent hours training their ears and learning to decipher sounds in the dark of the cave. Lucas swore to Abby one time that he could hear a snowflake land and she had laughed until she’d learned it was true. Everything has a unique sound if a person just listened. A snowflake, a leaf falling or someone breathing. Each of them had a distinct noise, and the trick was learning how to differentiate them from the all the other racket going on around them.
“It sounds to me like whoever it is, doesn’t really know where they’re going. It sounds like they’re moving back and forth, but not coming any closer,” Joe told Lucas.
“That’s what worries me. If it’s the same guys from before, they knew where we were, but probably don’t know if we’re alive or what. By now, they probably know about the cave in and maybe they’re just trying to figure out how many of us survived or if any of us did.”
“I almost feel like we should go back and observe them. If they have quads or something, it wouldn’t take long once the sun comes up for them to find our tracks, and follow them right to us.”
“Oh crap. Listen to that.”
Joe did listen, and he heard what Lucas had. He heard the steady drone of more than just the two motors, and he heard them when they shut off. “I think we need to wake up Willy and tell him.”
“You go ahead. I’ll wait here.”
Joe stood and hurried down to the camp. He shook Willy’s shoulder and was surprised when his dad woke too.
“What’s up?” Charlie asked.
“Lucas was right. We heard a couple more of the motors. Lucas thinks they’ve gathered at the cave and as soon as it’s light enough they’ll be coming this way.”
Willy sighed heavily, and looked up at the sky, “Lord, when is this going to end?” It was still night, but the sky had taken on the pre-dawn gray, and the stars had begun to fade. The moon still sat high on the horizon, but the morning was almost on them.
“Weren’t you supposed to wake Abby and I long before this?”
“Neither of us was tired, and I guess we got to talking and lost track of time.”
“We have schedules for a reason son. So remember that next time. Now, go and wake the others. Tell them we need to be out of here in an hour or less.”
Willy and Charlie went to find Lucas. As soon as they sat down beside Lucas, they heard the motors start up. Whoever it was, revved the engines up as if saying, “We’re coming for you.”
Chapter Twenty
“I guess it’s time to get this party started. I’m going to go and hurry the others up. Watch and if you see them, come running.”
Lucas nodded. “Hurry, because it sounds like they’re on the move.”
“Keep your head down and your eyes open.”
Lucas nodded and dropped down to his belly, careful to stay below the crest of the hill. No one coming their way could see him right then, but as soon as the sun got higher, he would be visible if the men had binoculars or even a rifle scope.
“Let’s go, people,” Willy told the others below him, and Lucas turned his attention back to the view in front of him. He knew that even with the quads, it would take the people a while to sort the fresh tracks out from the plethora of tracks left by the roaming animals. He hoped they were not smart enough to circle around to find any tracks leaving the area.
Lucas didn’t have long to wait. When he heard the vehicles and was sure they were headed toward him, he rose and slipped and slid his way down the slope to the river where everyone had gathered in two separate groups. Someone had put Ben up on Joe, and the rest of girls and women stood by horses, waiting. Gus, snowflake, the colt, the mothers of the two foals, and the cow milled around in front of them.
Olivia had the bag containing the last three chickens hung over Clyde’s shoulders, and Journey had the Billy on a long tether with the nanny beside him. Little Bear, sat on the ground at Sherry’s feet. The pup had grown, but Lucas didn’t see how it could keep up with the horses, and he hoped that someone would take pity on him and give him a ride. The pup was the last of their dogs and to lose him, would devastate Sherry.
Lucas looked at the terrain in the direction the women needed to go. There would be no such thing as hiding in the woods or brush because there was none or none good enough for the women to hide in. Low hills blocked his sight of the river in places and realized the dips in
the landscape would be the only cover the women and animals had.
He didn’t always understand the reasoning behind the decisions that Willy made, and their advisory council had fallen by the wayside with the destruction of the cave, but he’d seen Sam and Charlie standing with their heads together with Willy and hoped they were the new council. He hadn’t felt that, no matter how much Charlie said that he, Matt, Abby, and Olivia were to be considered adults, he didn’t think that they could make sound decisions when it came down to fighting off the bad guys.
With nothing to do but talk when they were trapped in the cave, he, Matt and the girls had planned how they would handle any battles, and they had agreed that they would have taken the fight to the men and would never have let anyone get close to their camp. Of course, when they’d discussed the imaginary conflicts and predicted the outcomes, each of them would have been equipped with assault rifles and had an unlimited supply of ammunition. They would have come out the winners and been considered as heroes, saving their families from certain annihilation. It had been easy to imagine, with nothing to do but dream and make plans for a future that none of them believed could ever happen.
Lucas shook his head at the memory, the reality of the upcoming fight was that they were ill-equipped to fight anyone, with only the one rifle and six handguns of various calibers.
Lucas paused and looked around. He saw the men bunched at the dead fire ring, which someone had extinguished. Their heads were together, but Willy looked when Lucas reached the bottom of the hill.
“Did you see them?”
Lucas shook his head, “No, but I heard them, and they’re moving this way. It might take them a minute to figure out which tracks are ours, but they’ll be coming.”
Charlie took the rifle from Lucas and handed it to Willy “Guess you’re the best man for this. Now, let’s get ourselves situated along the top of the ridge. Just remember, we only have the one long gun, so we have to wait until they get close enough to do any good.”
“I’ll pick off what I can, but this thing is only a nine mil. Not as much stopping power as that 308 of John’s.”
Lucas had been about to ask why all the females left when he knew that Abby and Olivia were as good of a shot as any of the men until he remembered they only had the six handguns and the Keltek, between them.
Everything else had been lost in the cave in. He also knew that the Keltec, his Glock and Abby’s nine-millimeter were the only ones that had enough ammunition to hold the guys for any length of time. Matt and Kenny only had a limited number of bullets for the 357 and .38.
“What’s the plan?” He looked for Joe who had his Glock. He wasn’t about to learn to use the 357 or the .38 on such short notice. He wanted a gun he was familiar with and one that fit his hand.
Charlie nudged him, and handed his .45 to him, “Joe thought you might want this. He and Kenny are over there, so plant yourself somewhere with cover and shoot when you have the opportunity.”
“I sure never expected to see any of these guys again,” Willy said from where he lay looking over the crest.
“Maybe these aren’t from the same bunch. Maybe we’re reading too much into them being here. What if we’re trying to ambush innocent people?” Joe whispered loudly from his spot on the ground close to Kenny.
“We’re not,” Charlie said firmly, leaving no room for discussion. “We wait until the last possible second and hit them strong. Don’t take any chances with disabling shots. We need to stop these guys here and now or we’ll always be looking over our shoulder.”
“Dad? How close do they have to be, so they’re in range.” Kenny waggled the 357 at him.
Charlie had no idea the exact distance needed, and he didn’t know the grain of the rounds that Journey kept loaded in her gun. His best guess was going to have to do. “A hundred yards, maybe a little more. Just wait until they’re close.”
Kenny nodded and grimaced, “The white of their eyes close?”
“That’ll do,” Charlie said and hoped he was right and hadn’t sentenced his boys and friends to certain death. His friends and family were going up against men that he suspected would be better equipped than they were and if they’d been smarter, they should have run while they had the chance. Now, it was too late.
The anticipation and dread built while they waited for what seemed like hours for the first four-wheelers to come into sight. The sun bounced up off the horizon, illuminating the valley. When the guys finally rolled into view, and there was no mistaking the motley crew for anything but what they were. If they weren’t from the same gang they’d battled before, they were the same type of men. One quad in front had abandoned the weaving trail following the erratic tracks in the dirt and headed directly toward the men hiding along the top of the rise.
The first of the machines slowed and stopped, leaning over, the guy seemed to be checking out the tracks in the dirt. He looked up, and Lucas could have sworn they had made eye contact but knew it was impossible.
Lucas counted them. He looked over at Willy and was surprised when Willy winked at him and held up four fingers.
Lucas shook his head and tried not to laugh. He thought that even Willy had to be as nervous as he was. There may have been only four vehicles, but he counted seven men between them. Seven heavily armed men. He wasn’t sure of their attack plan because he had been up top watching for the men, but he knew to wait until he was sure of his shot. Lucas’s imaginary meeting of the lead rider’s eyes had put a target on the man’s chest. Lucas looked down the barrel of the Glock, one eye closed and like he had done as a young boy, pulled the imaginary trigger, “Bang!” he breathed out and saw the man throw his arms in the air, do a pirouette and fall to the ground. Lucas saw him jerk and shake all over and fall still, his death recorded in Lucas’s mind. He blew the imaginary smoke from the tip of his gun. “One down,” he said. He blinked to clear the image from his mind and stared at the man.
Willy watched the men closing in and was tempted to start picking them off, but knew the stopping power of the Keltec would diminish with the distance and caliber of the shell. He would wait until the others had a shot and start eradicating the intruders from the back of the pack, leaving the front riders for the others.
When the sound of the machines died and was replaced by loud voices and a spattering of laughter, Charlie and the others exchanged glances.
The group of men had gotten off and stood to look around, several lit up cigarettes. They didn’t seem concerned with being shot at, or maybe they had no idea they were being watched. Maybe they had no idea how close they were. Charlie slid back over the berm and over sideways to confer with Willy. Willy moved to meet him.
“Gasoline and smokes…they must feel rich right now,” Charlie whispered.
“They ought to be running short on both right about now. That gas won’t last forever, and I doubt there are many cigarettes left either. It seems to me that the first three things they would run out of are those two and booze.”
The two men belly-crawled back up to the top, “Glad I have no need for any of them.” Charlie pointed down below. One of the men pointed up in their direction. The men climbed back on their rides and started them up. With the only solo rider leading the way they came across the open land to the bottom of the hill.
Willy knew the men on the machines couldn’t hear over the sound of their motors and felt safe telling the others, “We’ll let the first one come right in. Sure don’t want to take him out and have the others turn around and leave before they get close enough.”
Willy looked at Charley and used Gina’s expression, he rolled his eyes. “Good morning Vietnam!” He whispered to Charlie as if to remind him that he had been there and done that.
As they started up the incline, Charlie, who felt they were within his range and ability, placed his finger inside the trigger guard. He knew it was ready to fire and fully loaded. He drew in a long breath, took aim and fired as he let his breath out. The driver of the second qu
ad flew off sideways, allowing the driverless quad to careen off track. The rider didn’t seem to know whether to slide into the driver's place or reach for his rifle hanging behind him. Before he could make the decision, he went over backward and the quad, with no hands on the throttle rolled to a stop.
The driver on the leading quad fell sideways off his machine. He didn’t throw his hands in the air or jerk all over as Lucas had imagined, but the man was down and not moving. Lucas let his breath out and searched for his next target.
Willy watched the last four-wheeler as soon as the shooting started and wondered if the man sitting behind the driver was Silas. He was cleaner and by the looks of it, freshly shaven. He couldn’t get a clean shot at the passenger, so he set his sights on the driver. Releasing his held breath, fired. It was almost anti-climactic to watch. The driver slumped forward, and the passenger grabbed the guy’s shoulder and rolled him off while sliding forward onto the driver seat. He opened the throttle and cranked the wheel around, putting the quad into a sliding turn. He didn’t slow down when he ran over his injured driver. Over his head, he made a circle with his arm as if giving a signal to his men and rode back down the hill.
Willy searched for another target and realized that all three of the others were out of commission, and bodies lay where they had fallen. A man on foot got up and began a limping shuffle after the single rider. Willy heard someone else fire but figured the guy was too far away for a pistol to bring him down. He saw the man jerk but keep on running. Willy used his second bullet to bring him down. The man dropped face first and lay still Willy had lost track of the solo rider but finally picked him out, flying across the ground. He wasn’t slowing and waiting for his men, nor did he look to see if any of them were behind him. He disappeared over a low hill out of sight.
Willy lay looking at the scene below. He had trouble processing what had just happened. There hadn’t been a barrage of bullets, and the men down below hadn’t gotten so much as one shot off. It was apparent that his people had somehow, without a conference, each picked a different target and took the intruders out with minimal use of ammunition. It was a direct contrast to the earlier battle that had taken place before the snows. It seemed as if all their talking during the long seclusion in the cave, about what they’d each done wrong, had been remembered and not repeated.
Beyond the New Horizon: The Last Sun, Page 20