She stood up straight and looked out the front door. From where she stood, she could only see part of the parking lot and the woods beyond. And the blood. And the bodies. She turned away and went behind the lunch counter where Sylvia waited.
Kneeling on the greasy rubber mat, she set her bag next to her lover’s hand. “Hang on to this for me.” The joke came unbidden. She was a joker––had been her entire life––why stop now? Because there’s nothing left to smile about, that’s why. Looking up, she found a damp rag dangling off of the counter. She pulled it down and delicately tried to clean some of the blood from Sylvia’s face. Most of it was drying and caked on. Only enough came away to stain the rag so that successive dabs just smeared the blood around. She stopped trying.
“I’m so sorry, Syl. I would take you out of here with me if I could.” She considered what they had planned. She and Bryce were going to race across opposite sides of the parking lot––Carol high and making a commotion, Bryce low and quiet sneaking across to the shooter’s house. She was supposed to dash behind a car and take cover. And then do what? Bryce plans to run across the street while I… what? Fumble in my pockets for my keys? Maybe I could check my lipstick in the side mirror and straighten my hair. Fuck it. It’s as good a plan as any other I’ve heard.
She caressed the dead woman’s face and tenderly stroked her side as she moved her hand to Sylvia’s left wrist. Carol slipped the plain titanium band off of her wife’s hand. Syl had complained that it was loose since she had lost weight. Even though titanium bands like the ones they’d bought can’t be resized, she refused to replace the ring. Keeping the original meant too much to her. Carol turned it over in her fingers and read the inscription inside: 7/14/03 Family of Choice.
“I think I know what I’m doing. At least I know what I want. I guess we’ll see if I have the guts to go through with it. I volunteered anyway, because if I didn’t that girl who took your picture would have volunteered. I don’t know her, but it seems like the sort of thing she’d do and, well… I don’t know. I’ve had enough of sitting back and watching her do everything. I can do this one thing. And I know you can’t see me. But I’m going to pretend you can. And I’m going to try to help. I’m going to try to do the thing you would have done. I love you, Syl.” She leaned down and kissed her wife on the forehead, not able to bear the thought of Sylvia’s lips not kissing her back. She stood up and, staring at her feet, walked toward the swinging doors, trying not to look at the dead bodies littering the dining room. She bumped squarely into Bryce standing beside the lunch counter in Joanie’s blind spot, watching.
“What are you doing?” he asked. He was looking at her the way so many strangers had during their trip out to visit Syl’s family in Moscow, Idaho. He scowled at her with equal parts judgment and pity.
“I’m just saying goodbye.” She rubbed at the side of her neck, trying to find something to do with her hands other than claw at his disapproving look and rip it away.
“Look, I know it is hard for you to lose your… friend.”
“My wife.”
Bryce stared hard at Carol for a moment before continuing. “If you’re going to be my backup, I need your head in the game.”
“My head is where it is. I’m what you’ve got, for whatever that’s worth.”
“We’re getting ready to head out back and give it a shot. But first, will you pray for forgiveness for your sins with me?”
“You think I’m a sinner?”
“We all are. We’re born in it,” he said.
She shook off his unwelcome touch and shoved past him. “You can ask for forgiveness if you want to, but I’ve got nothing to atone for.”
As she pushed through the doors and into the back, she heard him whisper, “I do.”
#
Standing at the edge of the back lot, Lyn and her team stared at the rocks below. She tested one of the boulders with the toe of her shoe, timidly at first and then pushing hard. It didn’t move. She was pretty sure that wouldn’t be the case all the way down. Hunter and Leonard stood on either side of Neil holding him up. His right pant leg was soaked with blood. Standing there in the setting sun, the exit wound looked much worse than it had indoors. Again, what would have turned Lyn’s stomach a day ago didn’t now. She checked his tourniquet and asked, “Are you sure you can make it?”
“I don’t have many other options, do I?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“Then I can make it.” He was pale and out of breath, but upright.
Beau leaned against Daniel and Raylynne as they huddled in the middle of the lot talking softly to each other. Lyn felt some of her old uncertainty and self-consciousness peek through as she feared they were talking about her. Then she put it behind her. Who cares what they’re talking about? When we get to the bottom of this rock slide I’m never going to see or talk to Beau again. She resolved at that moment to take a friend up on her offer to come visit Oregon. He can’t blackball me in restaurants as far as Portland. I can start fresh. I just have to make it down the mountain.
Bryce and Carol were having trouble pushing the dumpster over toward the edge of the building to give them a bit of extra protection and a little extra attention to the north side of the diner while he sneaked past the propane shed on the south. Usually, Beau and a couple of guys he picked up at the Home Depot parking lot would empty the garbage from the dumpster into his pickup before taking it himself to the dump. The dumpster never moved. It didn’t roll well in the gravel. Joanie’s shots seemed to punch through everything. Lyn didn’t know if they could penetrate a dumpster half-full of garbage, but she saw them go through plenty of other things inside the restaurant: skulls and tempered storm windows and pretty much anything else in their way. Maybe she was using armor piercing bullets that’d Swiss-cheese Bryce and Carol’s cover, too.
“Do you really think that’s going to help?” Lyn called out.
“It has to,” Bryce said. “I can’t think of anything else.”
“I have an idea,” Leonard said. He leaned over and whispered in Lyn’s ear, pointing at Beau. Although she didn’t smile when he finished, she thought that under any other circumstance she could have kissed him.
“Beau,” Lyn said. “Beau,” she repeated, louder. He ignored her. She walked up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder instead of cuffing him in the back of the skull with her gun. “Give me the keys to the basement?”
“What for?”
“I want to grab one of those Fourth of July rockets you have down there.”
“We fired them all,” he said.
“Leonard says you held a bunch back.”
“That’s stupid. Why would I save any?”
“Because nights you work late you pop one or two off before heading home. Because you’re a petty, small shit of a man who enjoys torturing the woman across the street. You think if you drive her out of that house Adam Bischoff will finally agree to give you what you want––whatever that is––partnership in the business, a stiff dick up your ass, I don’t care. Now give me your keys or I’ll take them from you.”
“Try it if you think you can.” His challenge was almost comical given that he looked like he was doing his best not to vomit and pass out from the exertion of standing under his own power.
“Jesus Christ, Beau,” Neil called out. “When you’re standing in a hole, stop digging.”
He shouted, “Stay out of it, nigger.” A silence fell over the lot while everyone stared at Neil, waiting to see what a man who’d lost too much blood could do when pushed hard enough.
“No one has called me that to my face since college,” Neil said. “Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder, you know. Go ahead and shoot him, Lyn. Please.”
Abandoning the dumpster, Bryce ran back to intervene. Holding up his hands he said, “Come on, Lyn. Leave him alone. He’s a shit heel and he’ll get what he deserves eventually.”
“Yeah? How’s that? Is a karmic lightning bolt going to come out of
the sky and fry him? Is the Almighty Lord going to send him to Hell for being a coward and a racist? I’m not banking on my imaginary friends to do what needs to be done.” Her imaginary friend was no help at all. Not lurking at the edge of the woods the way he was. Staring.
“I’m not a racist. He just got under my skin with that crack––”
“He was trying to tell you to shut up before you said something stupid. And then you went and said something dumber than anyone could have imagined.” Lyn said. “Because you’re a moron. I’m saying it plainly because you’re too stupid to get it any other way.” She saw him balling up his fists, his knuckles turning white. Come on. Hit me again. I’ve got something for you. “Got something to say, dummy? Having trouble using your words?” I should have sent that text to Adam, she thought. Watched him roll up in that Beemer and get out looking like he’d just won the lottery. And then… She pushed back against the image. That’s not who I am. I didn’t send the text because that’s not who I am!
Bryce shoved Lyn back a step. “Lyn, shut up. Beau, give me the damn keys.” He held out his hand. “I won’t ask a second time.” Beau handed them over without backing down from the staring contest with Lyn. “Here, take them,” Bryce said, tossing them in the gravel at her feet. He held his breath while her hand hovered over the butt of her gun. Beau blinked and looked down. She picked up the key ring.
Far off in the distance, Bryce thought he could hear a siren. If he was right about Joanie, they were running out of time.
Lyn started flipping through the keys until she found the one marked for the cellar door. “Joanie can shoot through the dumpster,” she said. “Your idea is going to get the two of you killed before you even get started. But we’re still going to create a diversion for you. I hope you can run as fast as you think you can.”
#
Lyn emerged from the cellar with a small mortar tube cradled in her arms like a very heavy infant. “We’re going to fire this at one of the cars,” she explained. “Even if it doesn’t blow up a gas tank like in the movies, it should still be a helluva show. Enough of one for you to get to your patrol car. And then what?”
“And then I try to stop this before she shoots a state trooper, or a paramedic, or blows the side of the mountain off,” Bryce said.
“And the rest of us?” Daniel asked.
“You’re leading the group down the mountain,” Lyn said.
“Me?”
“Yeah. You. All you have to do is go first and don’t break your neck slipping on Luis’ guts or set off any mines,” she said, adding the details that had made her most fearful of the original escape plan. She looked at Beau’s cowboy boots and figured he probably wouldn’t climb down more than two or three rocks before he twisted his ankle and tumbled the rest of the way into a trip wire or a pressure mine or whatever Joanie had rigged up. She shocked herself again by thinking, And if he does that, he just clears another safe, albeit messy path for the group. It’s a win - win.
Bryce looked at his backup team and asked, “So what’s the signal?”
“Signal?” Lyn and Carol both asked.
“Yeah. The signal for me to start running. It kind of undermines the whole idea of having you out front if I start making a commotion. I need a signal that it’s time to go.”
Lyn held up the rocket. “This isn’t enough?”
“I suppose it is,” he said. “Which way are you going to shoot it?”
“The couple with the dog had a nice car. I think I’ll torch it,” Lyn lied. She intended to wreck Beau’s pickup.
Bryce looked at her with narrowed eyes and then held out his good hand. She took it and gave a firm shake like her grandfather had taught her. He winced at the pain and she wondered whether he could run at all with that kind of pain in his shoulder, let alone deal with Joanie on the other side. Still, he was the only one with the training to put an end to this. He was their only chance.
#
1755 hrs
Lyn and Carol crept along the side of the building, staying as flat against the wall as they could. Bryce’s blood trail leading out from under Andy’s pickup was dried and brown. “Where are you going to fire it from?” Carol whispered.
“Right here, I guess. I haven’t thought that far ahead.” Lyn looked at her targets. She had a clear shot at Beau’s truck if she stepped into plain view. She considered aiming for Joanie’s front porch instead, but she wasn’t sure how the rocket would fly or when it would explode. She figured it’d make it across the street, but she had a better chance of hitting something close.
“Do you even know how to light it?”
“Duh! I just light the fuse right here…” Lyn turned the tube over looking for a fuse. Instead she found a pair of copper wires tucked inside the bottom of the cylinder. “Fuck! I’ve got to get a battery or something.”
“No time.”
“We’ve got plenty of time,” Lyn said. “Bryce won’t go until we give the signal. I can go back and––”
“Once he’s in front of the shed, he said she can see him. We can’t wait.” Carol stood up.
“What the hell are you doing?” Lyn hissed.
Carol started jogging toward the lot. “Creating a diversion. He’d better get moving. She’s pretty fast with that gun.”
“Come back,” Lyn screamed.
#
Leonard did most of the work helping Neil over the rocks. Hunter was too small to be of any real help. As soon as he had to scramble off of a boulder that shifted under their weight, the two big men were left holding each other. While he labored near the top, Beau and Daniel were already halfway down the rockslide. Beau had shrugged off Daniel’s help and was moving down the rocks on his butt, leaving them all behind. Just like Lyn said he would. Behind him, Daniel had decided it was better to help Raylynne than go it alone; he was more or less dragging her down the mountain––lifting her off a rock, putting her down, apologizing, and then climbing down another and pulling her off the next one. When Leonard heard Lyn’s faint voice call out to Carol, he had to resist the urge to go back up. He wasn’t a coward, but when the shooting started he’d taken his grandmother’s advice to never run toward disaster. He’d found a place to hide and hunkered down to wait until the threat either found him or left on its own. I guess that does make me a coward.
It was something he wanted to make up for.
#
Carol ran into the parking lot fighting the instinct to hide. She’d thought she was out of tears, but at the last minute she found a few more. She’d gone along with Bryce’s plan, knowing it was suicidal, and then the girl tried to save her. Again.
She ran to the tailgate of the giant pickup truck and paused, waiting to see if she could hear Bryce running along the opposite side of the lot. She couldn’t.
Taking a deep breath and hoping it wouldn’t hurt too much, she stood up as straight as she could and calmly walked into the parking lot with her hands up. The silence seemed to stretch out like a thick blanket that covered the world, muting everything. No birds, no traffic, only her heartbeat and the sound of feet in the gravel.
“Hey! Over here, you bitch!”
And then she felt the hit.
#
Every step down the mountain was hell on Neil’s wounded leg, but he continued. He didn’t want to prolong the experience by slowing. Any slower, and I’ll be standing still. Nevertheless, something was telling him not to move forward. To hunker down and wait. He pushed on until Leonard came to a stop, looking worried.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know,” Leonard said. “Just a feeling. Daniel! Beau!” The two high school kids turned back. Leonard gestured for them to stop. Beau didn’t look. He called out again. “Beau! Stop!” The little man kept crab-walking down the mountain, reaching the point where Luis’ remains began.
“What’s the matter?” Neil asked.
“Bryce thinks Joanie’s got a switch for the bomb in the shed.”
“Yeah. That’s why
we’re down here,” Hunter said.
“What if it’s connected to whatever she planted down there too?”
“Jesus,” Neil whispered. “Beau! Stop!”
#
“Over here, you bitch!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Bryce caught a glimpse of Carol’s bright red hair. He glanced over to see her standing beside Beau’s Silverado pickup truck waving her arms. Jesus! What’s she doing? Where’s the damn fireworks?
Taking it as a signal that they couldn’t get the rocket to work, he ducked forward, keeping his head low as he sprinted away from the side of the building, trying to stay as close to the tree line along the far edge of the lot as he could. He assumed something must have gone wrong with the rocket. It was the only explanation why Carol would be standing in the lot trying to get shot.
Unless that was her plan all along.
He lost a step as he looked up and saw the place from which Joanie had to be launching her assault. Unlike the windows on the main floor, and the upper floor, which were obscured with white sheer curtains, the windows at the close end of the under deck patio were completely blacked out. It’s a shooter’s blind. She can see out but we can’t see in. He imagined her set up behind the black curtain, watching them from under the cover of the deck. He realized when he’d first pulled into her driveway, the stairs had to have blocked her view of him. If I’d stayed put instead of running to help those kids, I could have made it in and stopped the whole thing. That had never been an option for him, though. He had as much choice then as he had now to stop, to find a place to hide, to leave everyone else behind and sneak away alone.
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