The Fort

by Aric Davis

  The cap and glasses were barely staying on his head, and Hooper kept having to fix them with his hands. If ever there was a time when he wished he were wearing a disguise, this was it, but the ball cap and sunglasses would have to do. The pistol was growing heavy in his hand. He’d never have chosen it as a carry piece, but in the time of need it had been his only option. When I catch her and get her back to the house, I’m going to beat the shit out of her, and I’m going to fuck her every which way but loose. The thought of punishing her lent speed to his legs, and for the first time since the chase had begun, Hooper began gaining ground on her.

  She slowed as she crossed a small creek—sharp rocks don’t go well with bare feet, figured Hooper. He almost had her then, but she must have sensed it, picking up the pace as his fingers nearly touched her back. She darted away from his touch as though he had poison running through his veins. It was painful to see Amy running away from him all over again.

  Finally, she leapt over a downed tree, and must have twisted her ankle or caused some other injury to herself, because she screamed and went down. Hooper winced at the sound and then hopped over the log, letting the Colt lead the way. Her eyes went a mile wide at the sight of it, and she backed up tight against the log.

  “You need to shut the fuck up right now,” said Hooper. “Unless you want to get shot, get your ass up.” The gag had fallen out of her mouth at some point during the chase, and she was heaving air into and out of her lungs so quickly that Hooper was scared she might hyperventilate. “C’mon, it ain’t all that bad. Get up and relax a little bit. You’re going to pass out if you don’t.”

  She screamed again then, and Hooper slapped her with the hand not holding the pistol. The noise stopped immediately, and he held up his hand like he might do it again if she gave him reason enough to. “You good?” She nodded, and Hooper knew he had her.

  Amy led the way, Hooper walking behind her with the pistol buried in her back. She was no longer crying, and seemed to Hooper almost resigned to what was happening. Her dark hair hung in matted strands, and, not for the first time, Hooper ached to wash her. She wasn’t street trash like the rest of them. He wanted Amy clean, he needed her sparkling, done up and polished, but not as slutty as when he’d picked her up. All those things were going to happen once they got out of the goddamn woods, Hooper promised himself. It was time to break her, to make her give herself to him. He’d gotten lucky in catching her, but she’d gotten luckier by momentarily escaping. He couldn’t wait to get home and figure out how she’d done it, and he knew that with the stuff he’d bought today, it wasn’t going to be happening again.

  18

  Luke had beaten Scott after falling behind one–nothing and then scoring twice with paper to get the victory. Scott soured momentarily, but Luke perked up after the win.

  Tim had been given the rifle, a single bullet, and a magazine to put the bullet into. Though the gun was semiauto, the boys hadn’t even had to discuss firing it in such a way, as that would almost undoubtedly bring angry parents, or worse, down on them.

  Tim slid the little bullet into the magazine and then pushed the magazine into the AR-7’s tiny mag well, where it clicked into place with the satisfying sound of oiled metal on metal. “I pull this back to rack it, right?” Tim asked, and Scott nodded. Tim did so and was surprised at the effort it took. Then, once it was as far back as it could be pulled, he let go of the charging handle. It snapped back into place, and the gun was ready. “I’m kind of nervous,” said Tim. “Now that we’re really doing it. What if it’s, like, super loud?”

  “It won’t be,” said Luke. “You saw how little the bullet was. It’s going to be loud to us, but only because we’re stuck in here. Somebody outside will just think it’s a firecracker.” Thunder rumbled in the distance. “Even better, they’ll think it’s just more thunder.”

  Dad was right, Tim thought as he laid the barrel of the .22 on the windowsill. I guess it is going to storm.

  He slowly shrugged his body around the gun, with his chin laid on the stock, just like they did with their air rifles. His finger was still off the trigger when it thundered again, louder this time, making him jump. Tim rested the barrel of the gun on the bottom of the windowsill and watched the front sight stop shaking in front of him. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then began to acquire the target.

  Luke was on his right side, Scott on his left, and the other boys were watching the target, wishing it was their turn, and waiting for the crack of the rifle.

  The blade of the front sight was hovering between the ears of the rear sight, floating up and down with Tim’s heartbeat, settling over the target, then leaving, then coming back to the center of the target. Not making a good shot when he got only one try would be a colossal failure, and Tim took in a breath, let half of it out, and slowly began to pull back on the trigger. It was creaking under his finger, moving ever so slowly backward, when Luke whispered, “Holy shit. Look.”

  “I’m trying to aim,” said Tim. “We’re all going to get a turn, so you don’t need to be a dick about it.”

  “Seriously,” whispered Luke. “Look in the pines over there. Tell me I’m not crazy.” Scott and Tim both did, though Tim left the gun pointed more or less at the target, and blindly made it safe with his fingers. They both saw it at the same time, and as the man and the woman emerged from the pines, less than thirty yards from where they were sitting, they knew that Luke wasn’t crazy.

  The woman was crying, had black curly hair, and was being pushed ahead by the man. He had something in her back, though none of them could tell what, and when it thundered again they all jumped. It was obvious to all three of the boys that the girl was Molly Peterson, or someone who looked a great deal like her, but the man’s features were indistinguishable. Rain began to fall in the forest, and they could see two things: Molly and the man were heading back to somewhere in the suburban neighborhood where Scott and Tim lived, and the man was pressing a gun into her back.

  “You have to shoot him, Tim,” said Luke. “Like, right now.” Tim felt as though he’d been punched in the face. You were never supposed to point a gun at someone else, but on the other hand, the man was pointing a gun at Molly. “This might be her only chance,” hissed Luke, louder now, as the rain began to fall more forcefully. “If you can’t do it, give me the goddamn gun.”

  The next moments would last forever in Tim’s mind, as the world slowed around him. He shouldered the rifle, put the front sight over the center of the man’s back, and flicked the safety off. His finger began to tense on the trigger, and he let out a deep breath, then moved away from the window and fumbled the gun to Luke and Scott. Scott was pale, backing away from the rifle as if it were on fire, and Luke took the weapon. “I can’t do it,” said Tim, with tears already beginning to stream from his face. “I just can’t do it.”

  “I can,” said Luke, as he lay the gun on the fort’s windowsill, quickly took aim, and fired.

  The bullet hit the man in his right calf. He screamed, and Luke fumbled trying to get another bullet chambered. He had the magazine out, but bobbled the round and dropped it onto the floor of the fort. Finally, his fingers found it, and with shaking hands, he slid the bullet into the magazine. “They’re gone,” said Scott flatly, and when Luke looked up he saw that it was true. Rain was falling heavily now among the trees, and there was no sign of them. It was as if they’d never been there at all.

  “We need to get this gun back to my house,” said Scott. “And then we need to call the police.” He looked for the empty brass on the floor of the fort, but gave up quickly—it could have been anywhere. “Now, we need to go now!”

  19

  Hooper felt the bullet before he heard it. It was a sharp, stinging pain, and when it was followed by the distinctive crack of a rifle, he was immediately sure that he’d been shot. He screamed, bellowing with everything he had in his body, but the worst part wasn’t the pain, it was the look on her face. Amy was smiling. She looked beaut
iful, utterly vivacious and full of life, so happy to see him suffering. I’ll remember this, you little bitch.

  Hooper staggered from the pain, then got his legs back under him and forced himself to fight the instinct to look for where the shot had come from. Instead, he bit into his cheek, hard, pushed the gun harder into her back, and moved her into thicker brush, popples, brambles, and prickers.

  It wasn’t a direct line to the house, not anymore, but Hooper figured that was OK. Someone had seen him, and known that what was happening was bad enough to risk shooting at an armed man. Hooper wished he could see who’d done it and kill him, shoot him in the stomach and watch him die like a dog. Did he understand the lengths Hooper had gone to get Amy, to keep her? Why would anyone want to take something away from a stranger? Hooper understood the risks law enforcement, posed but hated to imagine the kind of person who would try and take someone like Amy away from him. He had, after all, already lost her once.

  Once they were hidden among the trees, Hooper took a minute to listen. It would have been easy for someone to have pursued them to this point, but the brush they were in now was thick enough that no one was going to be able to just sneak up on them. He gave a look to his leg, leaving the gun pointed at Amy’s back. There was a little hole in his jeans, and he was bleeding, but not much, at least not yet. Not ready to see the hole, Hooper pulled the front of his pant leg up, hoping to see that the bullet had passed through, and winced when he saw that it hadn’t. That’s not good.

  Knowing that he needed to ignore the pain, both present and yet to come, Hooper pushed the pistol into her back, hard. Amy arched away from the gun, and Hooper said, “Move.” She did.

  They came out of the popples after a few hundred feet of walking through the tightly wound brush. Hooper could see the burrs all over Amy, but didn’t care like he should have. Bile was churning in his stomach, and nausea swept through him as he walked. Rain was pouring over them, and there might have been thunder, but he wasn’t sure. When he finally saw the row of houses as the trees began to give way to civilization, he ground the barrel of the pistol into Amy’s back, as though trying to share some of the pain from his leg. “If you yell or try to run, I will shoot you.” She didn’t say anything, just kept walking ahead of him with the gun in her back.

  They finally made the fence, just as a tremendous roar of thunder made Hooper think for an instant he was being shot at again. He stumbled, and for a second he felt like she might run, but the moment passed. They crossed through the fence, and Hooper shut the gate behind him. The small amount of strength and energy he had left was fading; he wanted to collapse on the lawn and just sleep for a few days. He knew that was impossible, though. As much as he hated the idea of going to jail, he hated the idea of losing Amy even more. That thought was enough to fuel him to herd her like livestock into the house.

  He needed to get her into the basement and himself looking normal again. It was possible the person who had shot him had recognized him, but Hooper thought he looked too nondescript for that to happen. Either way, though, the cops were going to be here soon, that was pretty much a guarantee. Hooper slammed the sliding door shut behind him, then locked it and dropped the blinds closed.

  20

  Scott set the rifle back where he’d found it in Carl’s room in the basement, gave one more look around to make sure there was no other sign that he’d been in there, then shut off the light and headed upstairs. Tim was lying on the floor with a wet towel on his forehead, still looking like he might pass out. Luke wasn’t doing much better. He was sitting at the kitchen table wearing a thousand-yard stare. “You guys need to snap out of it,” said Scott. “Like, right now. I’m going to call the cops.”

  They had run from the fort, not considering what would have happened if the man who had been with Molly had been laid up and waiting for them. He hadn’t been, though. By the time they burst from the woods and back onto Scott’s street, the rain had turned from a summer shower to a full-on thunderstorm. Lightning crackled in the sky, and thunder rumbled. Scott unlocked the door, and they had made it into the house when Tim’s knees buckled. “You have to help him,” Scott said to Luke, running on to the kitchen to get a towel to dry the gun, and then booking it downstairs.

  “We have to tell the cops that I shot him,” Luke said now, flatly. “If we don’t, they’re going to figure it out later, and I’m going to get in a ton of trouble. I shot him. Holy shit, I shot a pers—”

  “Shut up,” said Scott. “I understand that you guys are freaked out, and I am too, but we need to get our story straight, and it can’t involve the rifle.”

  Luke and Tim, who was propped up on one elbow now, stared at him.

  “If this guy gets caught,” Scott said, “and if they pull a bullet out of him, then we admit to it. No one will think it was a big deal because a bad guy got caught. If we say we did it before he gets caught, though, we’re just admitting that we shot someone. And we shot him, Luke, not just you. We did it.” Scott took a deep breath, and then continued.

  “I’m going to call the cop that I talked to, and then you guys are going to call your parents, and I’m going to call my mom at work. The story we’re going to tell is simple: we tell them everything that happened except for the part about the gun. All the rest of it’s fine: we were up in the fort shooting air rifles and—”

  “Luke and I don’t have our air rifles with us,” said Tim. “If that cop that Scott talked to is the same one that was at my house, he’s going to be able to see through our lies really easily. He made me feel like I’d done something wrong without even talking to me.”

  Luke nodded in agreement and said, “We’ll just say we were all shooting your air rifle, Scott. That works. And it’s really close to the truth.”

  “I’m going to call him now,” said Scott. “Remember what I said.” Scott dug the card from his pocket, then took the phone off of the cradle and spun the number in. He held the phone to his ear, and someone said, “Van Endel.”

  “Is this Detective Van Endel?”

  “This is he. Can I help you?” The detective sounded busy, gruff, and Scott could already feel fear rushing through his veins like fire. “Uhh, yeah,” said Scott. “My name’s Scott Dijkstra, and I talked to you yesterday. I was the kid you saw with muddy shoes. My friends and I think we saw Molly Peterson with a man. He had a gun.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “At home, 229 Fernwood. Right where you saw me yesterday.”

  “Are your friends with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. You need to lock all the doors in the house and turn out the lights. I’m going to put this through to Emergency and get a squad car out there as soon as possible. Hang on.” Scott could hear Van Endel screaming something, but it was muffled, as though the mouthpiece on the other end had been palmed. Then Van Endel was talking to him again. “Do you know if you were seen?”

  “No,” said Scott, then remembered the bullet in the man’s leg. He had to have known someone was out there with him and Molly. “Well, maybe. I don’t think he saw us leave the woods, though.”

  “All right,” said Van Endel. Scott could hear stress in the man’s voice, and didn’t think that was a good thing. “Here’s what I want you to do. Have you locked those doors and turned out the lights?”

  “No, not—”

  “Have your buddies do it. Now.” When Scott had told Tim and Luke and they’d run off, Van Endel went on. “I’m going to hang up, and I want you to call 911. Let them know where you are, that you spoke to me, and that a car has already been dispatched and should be there any minute. They will verify that the officer is at your location when he gets there. Do not let anyone in the house until you are told by the 911 operator that an officer is on your porch. And stay away from the windows.”

  “My friends here need to call their parents,” said Scott.

  “That’s going to have to wait a few minutes. I’m going to hang up now so I can get ready to meet you
when you come down here. Do you have any questions?”

  “No.”

  The phone clicked and turned to a dial tone. Scott pushed the button to hang up, and then slowly dialed 911. His friends were back with him and watched while he dialed. His hand was shaking as it worked the wheel, and he wondered why it had taken so long for him to realize that they could be in danger.

  It was less than ten minutes later when the 911 operator named Carol said that it was OK to open the front door. Nothing had happened in the ten minutes since Scott had first dialed Van Endel until now, and he figured that was a good thing. By the tone of relief in Carol’s voice when she said that an officer was at his house, Scott could tell that she did too. He thanked her and hung up the phone, then walked to the door and slowly opened it.

  A police officer was there, with his back to him. He was holding a shotgun. Without looking back, the officer said, “Go ahead and get it all the way open, son. I’m going to back in.”

  Scott did as the man asked, pulling the door open as far as it would go, and then backing up as the cop methodically walked backward into his house, before slamming the door. Only then did the cop turn around. He was older, older than Carl; if he’d had to guess, Scott would have guessed he was fifty, maybe older. “Are you guys all OK?” he asked, and the boys nodded. “OK, good, really good.” He gestured with a wave to the kitchen. “Let’s go on and get away from the front door, all right?”

  None of them said anything in response, they just walked where the officer told them to and he followed them into the kitchen. “I’m Officer Summers,” said the cop. “And we’ll have this thing stabilized soon. Right now we just need to hang tight until that happens. Sound good?”