Lines in Shadow: Walking in the Rain

by William Allen

  With the door now ajar, Scott could hear others moving around in the old house. With the number of windows on this side of the structure, he still worried about missing some of the gang if they slipped out a window, but he could tell time was getting to be tight. So far, he’d eliminated two, but that still left at least eight more valid targets. If Bennie told the truth, which was now seriously in doubt.

  Fuck it, Scott thought, and drew his pistol, silently working the action and chambering a round. This was about to get loud, and for some reason he wished he had Luke in the house with him. Some of that berserker mojo was about to come in handy in about thirty seconds.

  Creeping down the hall meant sticking to the inner side of the narrow passageway, both to reduce the chance of the floor creaking and to minimize his shape in the potential bullet funnel. No one had come running when he’d put down the man in the bathroom, still he worried his presence had been noted. Maybe the bad guys were hiding under their beds, but more likely they were just waiting for him to pass and then planned on shooting him in the back.

  The first doorway to the left led to what Scott’s dark-adapted eyes appeared to be a disheveled bedroom, with the particle board check-of-drawers torn apart and clothes littering the worn-out shag carpet. The bed looked like it might have been occupied, but Scott nearly recoiled in horror as his searching fingers grazed a cold lump under the sheet. A dead body, and one fresh enough not to stink up the room. He didn’t have time to check this latest corpse, so he eased the door shut and took another step down the hall.

  That led him to the center of the house, Scott saw, as he came to a sharp turn to the left and opened into the kitchen. Peering hard into the darkness, he thought he could make out the dim shape of a door to his right, leading to the enclosed back porch he’d spied earlier. Okay, that helped make some sense of the layout of the house. Across the way, he thought he could see another hallway leading to more bedrooms, but the immediate threat was to the front, where something shifted in the kitchen. A shape, sensed with something more than the rods and cones in his eyes, stood next to the kitchen sink.

  “Jesus, Roan, was that you making such a racket in the bathroom? Church sent me to see what was up? And where’s your candle? Don’t tell me you dropped another one in the toilet. Sheez, that shit don’t grow on trees anymore, you know.”

  The man’s accent marked him a pure country, no doubt a local. Scott figured his height generally matched that of the man he killed, and since the Springfield was held against his right leg, the searcher couldn’t see he’d entered the room armed.

  Someone with a clever tongue or a better plan might have tried to engage the man in conversation, or tried to elicit more information. But Scott wasn’t, and he didn’t, so he simply lifted the pistol and fired three shots in rapid succession. Two in the chest, one in the head. Mozambique Drill, properly executed, resulting in yet another raider down.

  The gunshots exploded in the still air like bombs detonating, and a triple flash briefly illuminated the room with a strobe effect, but Scott managed to keep his left eye closed for the critical few heartbeats. The trick was something one of his firearms instructors had imparted, and allowed him to retain night vision in that eye at least.

  A younger, less wary man might have sprung forward at that point, charging into the living room or in the direction of the far hall. The hall might have been an option, possibly for the next few seconds, but an answering shotgun blast directed into the kitchen from the living room would have eviscerated anyone heading that way.

  Scott, wary of just such a reaction, had dropped into a crouch, using the ancient refrigerator as concealment, as he alternated eyeballing the two routes. Then, a fast-moving figure erupted from the mouth of the hallway, firing rapidly into the same general area already patterned by the buckshot a few seconds earlier.

  9mm Pistol of some sort, Scott deduced as he placed two shots into the man’s back. No way to go for the head with that little light, and firing with one eye shut again. Then he rolled himself toward the hall entryway and emptied the remainder of his magazine in an arc towards the living room. At the same moment Scott’s trigger finger tightened for that first shot, a hail of buckshot pitted and sparked off the old refrigerator.

  Scott had no way to be sure if his suppressive fire hit anything in the living room, but he knew for certain from his earlier scouting that he had more hostiles down this hall. So as soon as he managed a rapid magazine change, he oriented his body in a low crouch and extended the barrel of the XD in the direction of the remaining bedrooms. Doing so left him vulnerable to the shotgun wielder in the living room, but he was skinny on choices at the moment, and all had their risks. He would just have to hope he would hear someone approaching through the kitchen.

  Duckwalking along the wall, Scott strained his battered ears to their limit, but all he could make out were the sounds of scuffling shoes in the next room. Then someone inside got smart, and Scott hit the floor as a line of shotgun slugs stitched a line of holes in the sheetrock about six inches above where his head had been. The narrow space filled with blinding light and a shower of pulverized sheetrock.

  Scott let out a loud groan as he hit the linoleum, giving the shooter inside something to think about. Laying still, his arms extended in front of him, Scott gave it thirty seconds to see if anyone took the bait. After a count of fifteen, he caught movement and triggered three shots at about waist high before rolling across to press his back against the other side of the hallway. The accompanying scream didn’t sound fake at all, but Scott wasn’t about to go check.

  Then he heard the sounds of breaking glass, and a smattering of muttered words, perhaps curses, in the room next to him. Still laying low, Scott risked a rapid glance back the way he came, but nothing seemed to be stirring towards the kitchen.

  He thought he heard more breaking glass further along the hall form one of the other rooms, but Scott wasn’t going to risk taking a look. He’d taken advantage of others’ reactions this night, and wasn’t willing to fall for any traps if he could help it. So far, he’d managed to neutralize at least three of the gang, likely more, and prevented the rest from escaping through the undefended back windows, so…

  The rapid boom of shotguns and the sharp cracks of sustained rifle fire interrupted Scott’s thoughts, and he made sure to keep his head down as stray rounds impacted the wood sheathing of the house and penetrated as if cutting through paper. That was the rest of his team joining in the fight, he realized immediately. Crawling on his belly, Scott reversed course and slid down the few feet until his head approached the demarcation line where the hall fed into the kitchen. If the inhabitants of the bedrooms were outside, he needed to check on the status of the shooters holding the living room, before they thought to return the favor.

  Scott was still waiting there when he heard Sarah’s voice calling from outside. Checking to see if he was safe. The man didn’t reply, not wanting to tip off whoever was waiting in the living room, but he felt a surge of unexpected emotion at hearing the woman’s words.

  Was it that someone cared, or was it because of who was doing the asking? Scott decided to tackle that question later. For now, he still had the rest of the house to secure.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Surprisingly, or at least to the men in Max’s team, one of the raiders they captured turned out to be a woman. For Yalonda and Sarah, they merely took it as a matter of course. Given the right circumstances, women could be just as evil as their male counterparts. Scott realized he’d helped kill plenty of women who’d joined, willingly or not, with the skinnies at the attack in Gentry as well as the ones his team ambushed leaving the camp in Lowell. Just didn’t seem the same to him.

  That was all he could think as he looked down on the remains of the shotgun wielding raider he’d hit in the throat and upper chest, her face a gaunt mask and her stringy brown hair a poor substitute for a halo around her head. She’d done her level best to kill him, firing into the kitchen bef
ore catching those two rounds he’d fired in desperation. Thank God her eyes were closed, he thought, as he finished gathering up the dropped weapons in the room.

  Loading up the three prisoners into an old stake bed farm truck, Scott made sure the zip ties and chains fit securely before heading to check on the recovered slaves and their own wounded. He found Yalonda busy, picking out birdshot pellets from the shoulder of one of the younger assaulters, a blonde-haired kid who’d talked a good fight before the shooting started. Now, he seemed more subdued, and Scott doubted it was all from the minor wound he sustained. She’d set up her rough aid station out in the open, taking advantage of the early daylight to do her work. She didn’t need much, just a pair of folding camp chairs and her heavy trauma kit for supplies.

  Max sat on an upturned bucket in the shade of the barn, his own thoughts hidden as he surveyed the shot-up exterior of the old house. He’d been hit with a piece of glass at some point, opening a cut over his left cheek.

  “You going to get Yalonda to look at that?” Scott asked, by way of breaking the ice.

  “What? You mean this?” Max asked, gesturing at his face. “Cut myself worse shaving.”

  “Then what’s on your mind? I can tell something is bothering you.”

  Max glanced down, studying his boots for a moment.

  “I knew one of those guys in there. In the house. He was a blackjack dealer for us, the club, I mean. If I’d known he was in trouble, having to do this to survive, I would have found a place for him out at Jeb’s.”

  Scott nodded, getting the idea. Max was feeling guilty.

  “Max, when one of your schemes went bust, did you blame the cops for arresting your men?”

  “What? What’s that got to do with anything?” He paused, thinking over Scott’s question. “No, I guess not. They were just doing their job.”

  “That’s what I figured you’d say. This is the same deal. He made his choices, and he had to live, and die, with those choices. Who’s to say he would have accepted your offer, or that you would’ve been in a position to make it? You cannot change the past, and you can’t be held responsible for the decisions others make. And trust me, hanging with this crowd was a very poor decision.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. We’ll need to execute these prisoners, once we have everything they can give us, won’t we?”

  Scott shrugged. “Me, I’d do it. After seeing those girls in the basement, I could cap them in front of their mothers and not lose any sleep, but that’s me. For you, maybe you can think of something different. But you don’t need me to tell you that you can’t afford to waste manpower guarding them, or feeding them unless they are contributing to the good of your community.”

  “When did you get to be the old hard ass, and I turn into some bleeding-heart pussy?” Max asked, and he chuckled harshly after the words left his mouth.

  “I told you, seeing what I saw…I can’t put it into words, Max. I don’t think I will ever be the same, and neither will the men with me.” Scott stopped speaking, a sigh escaping his lips. “Just pray you never see anything like it.”

  Max seemed to understand the sensitive nature of the topic and tried to change the subject. Max might have a quick temper but he was also quick to forgive, and there was no forgiveness in this man’s heart anymore.

  “We’ll deal with it. Without your quick thinking, we wouldn’t have caught any of them anyway. How did you know they would all try to get out on this side of the building, anyway?”

  “Because I killed everybody in position to go out the other ways. It was a lucky coincidence. Well, lucky for me. Not so much for the other guys.” Scott replied, and he felt a flush creep up on his face as he asked his next question.

  “Have you seen Sarah? I wanted to ask her something before we head back.”

  Max gestured over his shoulder, into the barn.

  “She’s having a word with the ladies we found. Trying to reassure them, I guess. And you are right,” he conceded. “For what those women went through, the prisoners will have to pay.”

  Scott walked into the barn, relieved to find the stink of death was fading if not gone from the premises. He’d found Aaron digging the grave earlier, and he’d retrieved blankets from the house used to wrap the bodies of the dead couple.

  That search did result in some humor, however grim, as Scott checked the back bedroom for the corpse he’d discovered when he was creeping in the room. In the light of day, with the blackout curtains pulled down, he saw the “corpse” was actually the head and torso of a CPR dummy someone had discarded into the room, while the death stink belonged to a well-stomped cat he located in the corner of the room. Well, that was something anyway, and Scott resolved to keep that little embarrassing detail to himself. Maybe tell Darwin someday. Or Sarah.

  “Hey, Sarah,” he started, speaking in a friendly, neutral tone so as not to startle the recovering ladies. Yalonda, after a quick exam, pronounced them bruised and battered but essentially fine. Physically. He didn’t ask if the women had been raped. He could see it in their eyes, the wariness and their flinching to his very presence.

  “What’s up, Scott?”

  “We’ve get the bed of the truck set up to transport these ladies, as soon as you give the word.”

  Using more blankets, Scott and Brent, one of the snipers from last night’s action, reorganized the truck bed with the idea of letting the women lay low in the back of the truck and using the cushioning to soften the otherwise rough, plastic bed liner. With five women and girls added, along with the three prisoners, they faced serious overcrowding in their transport.

  “We’re ready to go now,” Sarah replied, her voice seeming a bit strained to Scott. Dealing with the pain and degradation of these women seemed to be resurrecting Sarah’s own inner demons. Or at least, stirring up a remembrance.

  “Take all the time you need,” he replied, “I meant the truck is ready, but Yalonda is still plucking that kid.”

  For some reason, that news didn’t seem to upset Sarah, but then, she was still hard for Scott to really read her expressions.

  “Alright then, give us a few.”

  In a little less than fifteen minutes, the two trucks pulled out in a small convoy, overloaded but with no complaints. Well, the prisoners complained but with the gags in place, no one could hear what they said. Probably asking for their lawyers, Max joked, which got a stress-relieving laugh from those joined with him in the cramped truck’s cab.

  Scott rode in back, guarding those prisoners, and was joined by Aaron. Together they watched the woods, the roadside, and the rear. Too many times, Scott knew, an ambush succeeded because the target was hit returning to base and the watchers lowered their guard. However, it seemed this morning they had luck on their side and the trip passed uneventfully.

  Once back at the gates, Max stood down the highest stage of alert, but still kept ten men up and patrolling. No reason to get slack now, Max explained out loud, and at least to himself, he admitted being fearful of a visit from the Lowell compound cannibals.

  Sarah, with the assistance of Marge and Max’s woman, a busty blonde with a sharp tongue and a sharper sense of humor named Nancy, managed to get the women a change of clothes and a chance to clean up. All five had been forced to live in their own filth for days, if not weeks, and needed food and water to rebuild their strength. Yolanda also opined that based on their symptoms, three or more of them were suffering from some kind of urinary tract infection on top of everything else. She dutifully dug into her supply of antibiotics and prayed none of these women had contracted an antibiotic-resistant strain.

  Once back inside security, Max and company wasted no time isolating the three prisoners, which was the real reason for their gags. Hard to formulate lies when you couldn’t speak with each other, Scott knew. It was the same reason cops hauled suspects off to jail in different squad cars and didn’t let the multiple suspects to be housed in the same cells.

  Max, Scott, and Aaron simply chained each pr
isoner to a different tree and went to see Bennie. Needless to say, the bloody, battered man was less than pleased to see his tormenters return.

  “So, Bennie,” Max asked, slipping back into his role of prime questioner, “how many men were supposed to be waiting back at the farmhouse?”

  “Ah,” the man temporized, aware his small deceptions had been uncovered. “I don’t know how many men. Or where you are talking about. We discussed so many things already,” he pleaded.

  Max, of course, knew at least some of the lies, and wouldn’t take “I don’t know” as an answer. Scott, wielding the tools of the trade, worked to loosen the man’s resolve. He made a production of grabbing a claw hammer from the table, hefted the weight, and set it aside in favor of a larger framing hammer instead. Tapping the metal head ever so slightly against the back of Bennie’s left hand, bound at the wrist to the metal arm of the tubular steel chair with multiple zip ties, Scott looked at Max for a signal while Aaron observed.

  “When was your party supposed to return, Bennie?” Max asked, his tone bored.

  “Today, I mean, yesterday, yesterday,” he wheezed, his breath coming in ragged hitches as he anticipated the pain to come.

  “So you lied to me before, I take it?” Max asked, pressing but keeping his voice even. Like he was discussing the weather with an acquaintance.

  “I…I got confused, that’s all. Don’t know what day it is, or what,” he replied, his voice still rushed, but still terrified.

  “Scott,” Max said quickly, and Scott raised the hammer. Now, Bennie began to beg, his voice cracking in a shrill timber.

  As he worked, for the entire time, Scott’s expression never changed. He didn’t enjoy breaking the man, but to Scott’s way of thinking, the dead required a sacrifice.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT