by Lou Cadle
“A hundred percent in ours,” Sierra said.
“Except the Kershaw girls,” Dev pointed out.
“Town is different,” Kelly said. “Maybe one in four women will be good with a rifle or handgun.”
Sierra said, “So that would mean knocking on sixteen doors to find the four we need.”
Jackson said, “Or four doors. Or a hundred. Make sure you don’t knock on a door where an invader is staying.”
Sierra hadn’t thought of that. “Maybe we should have Joan with us. She knows where people live.”
“Used to live,” Kelly said.
“Right. Okay, I can see the problems with this.” Sierra shook off the disappointment she felt. “We may not need to do that anyway. Or when the shooting starts, they might come running and beg to help. Maybe some saw the flyers and have been talking with neighbors. Who knows?”
“We can’t know,” agreed Jackson. “We’ll get to the jail, try and get inside, and see what we see. Wes said you’ve worked out your own signals?”
“Let’s teach you those while we have time.” And for the next ten minutes, that’s what they did. Jackson was a quick study, but he finally held his hand up. “That’s all I can remember without confusing myself.”
“It’s enough. We should probably work in two teams of two anyway,” Kelly said. “I mean, we’ll go in all together, but should we be separated, we should try to stick with a buddy. Someone to watch our back, give us cover, tend to a wound.”
“Sure. I’ll go with Sierra, if that’s okay,” Jackson said.
Sierra had no sense whatsoever that this guy was looking at her as a piece of meat, as Tad might have been, so she nodded. She hated that she’d been reminded of it, but at the same time she was glad Curt had said something about Tad. Going on a mission with a guy who was distracted by thoughts of sex would be dangerous. But Jackson seemed focused, professional, and reliable. “Good by me,” she said, “if Kelly approves.”
Kelly said, “We’ll see when we get down and assess the situation.”
“Okay, people,” Wes said, raising his voice over the crowd’s murmur. “Let’s gather ‘round. I want to go over the night’s plan again. Make sure we’re all on the same page.”
Sierra figured that meant that he’d already been going over it with his own troops. Wes explained. They had planned a three-pronged attack. They’d be going in on two fronts about a mile apart, on the northwest and northeast sides of town. The jail was almost centrally located, a mile to the south of the main intersection.
“We stick to cover. No losses.” He raised his voice. “When the jail team releases men to fight, remember the danger of friendly fire. We might have three different teams coming at each other. Those of you with night scopes, know your targets. No one shoot at a woman. A woman is, statistically, likely to be a friendly. Try not to get separated.”
Someone close to him said something in a quiet voice.
“Right. While there may be a few female collaborators from what we’ve heard, at this point I think it’s likely they’ll lay low and not pick up weapons. I’d rather err on the side of caution. So no shooting at women. Or children.”
Curt spoke up, his odd, deep voice easy to identify. “Before, in our neighborhood, they used children as shields. If they do that again, it’ll be a problem.”
“Right. If that happens, be sure of your shot. If you have the skills and equipment, take head shots. If not, fire an occasional shot over their heads. Keep them pinned down and engaged.”
He had more to say, and Sierra listened, but not much of what he said applied to her. He was talking to his troops—and to Joan and Curt, who would be going with them.
“How will we know when we’ve won?” asked a woman.
“Nobody else will be shooting at us,” Wes said.
“What about if they surrender?” another woman’s voice asked. Francie, Sierra thought.
“Don’t trust them,” a man shouted.
“I wouldn’t trust them,” Wes said. “The other problem is, what do we do with them after surrender? Take them prisoner?”
“Yeah, then drive them out of town fifty miles and let them out,” Francie said.
“If you can safely subdue a man with his hands up, if there are no other people around shooting at you, do it,” Wes said. “Otherwise, just take him out.”
Sierra thought it would be far easier to get rid of such a person permanently. Fifty miles wasn’t far enough. Five hundred, maybe. Well, it wasn’t her call, not for the group. For herself, though, she thought if an enemy began to raise his hands overhead, she’d shoot him dead before they cleared the level of his shoulders. Problem solved.
Wes said, “Okay. I think this is a good enough plan. Things will happen that are not in our plan, because that’s the way luck goes, and we’ll adjust the best we can. By dawn, let’s make sure the people of Payson have their town back in their own hands.”
Scattered cheering and applause greeted his final statement. He shook some hands as he made his way over to their group. “You four ready to roll?”
Kelly said, “We are.”
“Watch each other’s backs. Don’t get hurt.” He shook Kelly’s hand and then turned away as his name was called.
“Let’s go, Mom,” Dev said. They walked back to the car, where Arch waited. Curt trotted over to wish them well as they put the spare firearms into their packs. It made the pack heavier, but not intolerable. Once they were done, Arch hugged his wife and shook his son’s hand. His reserve with Dev made Sierra roll her eyes, and Curt caught the look. He smiled at her. “Be careful, okay?”
“You too.”
“I’m in a big group. I’ll be less exposed than you will be.” He put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “But you’ve got this,” he said.
“I’ve had good training,” she said, nodding at Arch.
“Bolt cutters,” said Jackson. He went to retrieve them and carried them over to their car.
“Can I try them?” Sierra said. He handed them to her and she nearly dropped them, they were so unexpectedly heavy. “Whoa.” She gave them back to him. “All yours. Glad I’m not carrying them.”
They climbed into the car and Kelly drove in a tight circle and headed away from the meeting place. Sierra turned to look out the rear window at Arch, who was watching them leave. She saw his expression shift as they drove away, from resolute to anxious. And then she faced forward again.
Chapter 10
Dev stretched his hand and looked at it. It still ached from his father’s handshake. A desperately hard grip, you could call it. He couldn’t always read his father—not anything but his anger—but the strength of that grip hadn’t been anger. He thought his father had been saying with it, “Take care of your mother.”
And Dev would. He was glad the two of them would be paired as buddies because he didn’t want to let her out of his sight anyway. He’d failed to protect her from the grenades. He didn’t want to fail her again. From the passenger’s side, he watched her face as she drove through the deepening twilight. Her hair was tied back and pinned, and it made her look more severe. Older. He wondered if she was feeling as sore as he was from the grenade explosion. His head still ached, but it was a low-level pain, nothing bad enough to keep him from the fighting. He’d been able to snatch aspirin earlier today and had taken three right before they left home.
“What?” she asked.
“Me?” he said.
“Yes, you. What are you thinking when you stare at me like that?”
“Hoping you feel okay. How’s your arm?”
“I’m fine. I’m not a hundred percent, and I doubt you are either, no matter what you said. You can see all right though, can’t you?”
“Yeah. My eye feels a little dry, but I see perfectly fine.”
“Your depth of field okay?”
He looked out the window, but it was hard to say in this light. “I think so. I’d have noticed before if there was a problem.” He f
ingered the stock of his rifle. “Of course, I only need one good eye to shoot.”
“If you can’t see in three dimensions, it’ll be hard to pinpoint where people are.”
“Both eyes are okay. But even if I wasn’t fine, wouldn’t the fact that a man looked only an inch tall kind of clue you in that he was far away?”
“Don’t be a smart aleck,” she said, but she was smiling.
“Yeah, those one-inch invaders. They’re really a problem.”
“Who raised you again?”
“Some lady. Forget her name. Smart, organized, good shot. Could be nicer though.”
She laughed.
“What?” Sierra said. She’d been talking with Jackson in a low voice.
“Nothing,” Kelly said. “Dev’s just being a pill.”
“What’s that even mean, a pill?” he said. “Are pills funny? You see the aspirin telling jokes in the bathroom?”
“You okay, Dev?” Sierra asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. But he did feel a little strange. He wasn’t sure where the inclination to tease and joke with his mom was coming from. It wasn’t his usual style. Just too much tension, maybe, and a desperate desire to break it. Tonight was important to them all.
Important. And dangerous. His good humor fled.
“I’m going to pull up pretty close to town,” his mother said. “When I stop and we get out, don’t slam the car doors. The interior lights are already turned off. I want to drive slower in a few seconds. Everybody open your windows and listen for voices or footsteps or any sign of danger. And keep a lookout for people. For guards, I mean.”
He opened the window. The odor of pines was strong, but there was another scent on top of it. “You smell that?”
“Yeah,” Sierra said. “Smells like it could rain tonight.”
“Finally,” Jackson said. “But is that going to be good for the operation?”
“Shhh,” Dev’s mother said. “Listen.”
The electric car moved quietly as she drove slowly, and they all strained to hear any sounds above the scratching of tires on pavement.
“Are those footsteps?” Sierra whispered.
Dev tensed, listening, but then he relaxed. “No. That’s a flammulated owl.” It switched just then to its soft hoots. “There.”
“Sorry,” she whispered. “False alarm.”
Then no one said anything for many minutes. His mother drove more and more slowly. The last of the light faded from the sky.
They were all so intent on listening for small sounds, they all jumped when a crack of thunder sounded.
Moments later, his mother pulled off the main road and steered the car toward the south side of town. She stopped within sight of the first house, turned off the car, and pocketed the key. “Ready?” she whispered.
Jackson opened his door as an answer. Sierra whispered, “Yeah.” Dev reached for his mother’s arm and gave it a squeeze. They all exited, leaving the doors open. Everyone had their rifle in hand and a spare weapon in their pack. Dev had on his night hunting gear. Sierra was in all black, her hair tucked up under a baseball cap. Jackson had an army-surplus backpack, with the handles of the bolt cutters jutting out over his head. His backpack was the lightest-colored thing any of them wore, and the other three faces were all pale. You could only see them from close up, with no moonlight to shine off them. The sky was socked in with clouds.
A flash of lightning behind the clouds to the northeast lit up the sky. In the brief illumination, Dev checked the street ahead. No one was out. His mother started to walk down the street, and he trotted two steps to catch her and fell into step. Behind, he heard Sierra and Jackson fall in.
Dev kept scanning, side to side, looking for any danger. But nothing stirred. Not even a curtain moved in a window. Either people couldn’t hear them from inside, or they’d trained themselves to suppress their curiosity. In two windows was the faint glow of candlelight or lamplight through thin curtains.
His mother held up a hand to slow them at a cross street. She pointed Dev to the right, and she turned to face left, crossing with a sidling step, keeping watch to her left. Dev mirrored her. In his peripheral vision, Dev saw Jackson turning to check behind them. Excellent. It was odd to be working with an unknown team member, but Jackson seemed to have good sense.
They passed through the intersection without incident, and through the next. At the third cross street, as they approached, his mother hissed briefly and came to a stop. Dev stopped too. He heard footsteps. Not close, but not far enough for comfort. It might be some citizen walking a dog, but then he remembered what Sierra had told him weeks ago when Mia passed by. Dogs had been eaten during the first weeks of the hunger—by their owners or by thieves.
The footsteps were fading. His mother held up her hand and motioned everyone to stay still. She edged forward by herself, her rifle up. She stopped and used her scope to look up the street. She kept watching while Dev waited anxiously. Then she lowered her rifle. She held up two fingers. Two men. Another minute of silence, and she waved them forward.
The middle of the block, she whispered to Dev what she had seen. “Night patrol. Two men, rifles.”
Dev wanted to hear more, but he knew not to talk more than was necessary. The next block, his mom veered right at a Y intersection. The following block, she turned left onto a new street and waited for the others to catch up.
“Lights off to the right,” Sierra whispered.
Dev looked, expecting to see headlights, but he saw a glow in the sky. And then he heard the faint hum of a generator.
“Diesel,” Jackson said.
Dev wondered how he knew, but he suspected the man did know. Whatever the power source, the sound plus the light meant people. The enemy.
His mother waved them all closer. “That noise is in the direction we’re headed.”
“Maybe they keep the jail lit?” Sierra said.
His mom said, “Maybe a different building. A meeting place. Central headquarters?” She looked back. “You two trail a block behind us again. C’mon, Dev. No more talk.”
They approached their target very slowly indeed, taking a circuitous route, creeping up, trying to stay silent. The street was gritty with dust, not like it was when traffic was on it all the time. The breeze picked up, and the scent of rain grew stronger. His eyes watered with it, as if in sympathy with the clouds. As they approached the next intersection, he raised his scope to his eye and checked the street with night vision. The sidewalks retained the day’s heat as the woods did not. Even the buildings glowed a little. The faint glow in the sky from the lit building was too bright to look at directly, so he kept his scope aimed away from it. He wasn’t interested in that, but was looking for the shape of a human body. A movement caught in his other eye made him swing his rifle at it. But it was only a coyote, a lone one, trotting down the streets without hesitation, already used to this new freedom to roam the cities and towns at will.
Dev turned until he saw Sierra and Jackson, waiting motionless a block away. Nothing moved beyond them. He lowered his rifle.
His mother crossed the street, Dev trailing her by a few feet and scanning for danger. She went across and stopped a hundred yards later, pointing. He saw an alleyway then. Payson didn’t have a lot of them, but there was one here. Maybe it had been designed because of the government offices, or for the jail itself, for delivery of prisoners without the public seeing it.
For them, it was going to help in getting closer to the jail undetected.
For a moment, it struck him as amusing that he was about to break into a jail, but the feeling didn’t last long. It wasn’t an amusing situation. It was dangerous, and his mother and Sierra were both here, risking themselves. Part of tonight’s effort was for their protection, to get rid of this danger that lurked so close to home. But part of what they were doing was helping other people be free to run their own lives. He sure hoped the Payson people would be grateful they’d bothered.
Walking in
the alley was noisier than walking down the street, but as they approached the noise of the generator, their footsteps were lost in that louder noise.
The glow from ahead lit the side wall of the building his mother pointed to. It was the jail. There were no windows at all, which he should have anticipated but hadn’t given a thought to. He had hoped they could communicate with the men inside, get information on how many guards there were, but that was not going to happen, it seemed.
Across the street ahead and to his left was a lit-up building that didn’t take the night vision scope to see. A man came into view on the sidewalk in front of it, the lit end of a cigarette glowing briefly. Dev could take him, easily, but if there were another ten or twenty inside that building right now, that would be the worst possible thing to do. When the man turned away, he felt his mother push gently at him, and he moved right, toward cover, out of sight of the man.
Had the other group, the one Curt was in, acted yet on the north side of town? He saw no sign that men were being drawn out of the building ahead to help fight off an attack, but who knew what kind of communication capabilities they had. There hadn’t been any hand radios on the bodies up at their neighborhood.
He watched until the man moved away, along the side of the building, and then he turned and softly whistled the signal for “enemy” to Sierra. He got his mother’s attention, pointed back, and walked back several yards until he knew Sierra and Jackson could see him. Dev held out one finger to his side and pointed: one man, that direction. He hoped Sierra had the goggles on and could see the signal.
Then he returned to his mother. She pointed up. High on the wall of the jail, there was a vent or a window shuttered with metal. She jostled him and pointed more emphatically at it. Then she pointed at him.
He understood. She wanted him to check it out. Could he get up there?
Well, there were problems. A double fence surrounded the jail, and, when lightning lit up the sky again, he saw there was coiled barbed wire on the top of that. The bolt cutters could handle that. Easiest to cut through both the fences under the barbed wire, he imagined. Easier for the jailed men inside to get out if there was a hole in the fence. They might be hungry and weak and incapable of climbing.