by Shaye Marlow
In the pause, Rory darted to the gun rack over the mantel and pulled down a rifle. I was already behind him, getting two, one of which I tossed to Frances.
We hunkered down, disengaging safeties and checking our weapons. Rory liked to keep them loaded in case of emergency, and hey—for once, his paranoia was paying off.
“Who are they?” Rory asked, glancing toward the windows.
We heard the screen give its tell-tale creak, and Frances reacted fastest, shooting a hole through the bottom of the door. There was a pained cry, the screen swung shut with a bang, and our attackers pumped another hail of lead into the cabin.
Puck ran to us, eyes rolling with fear. Frances gathered him up.
“Give us Frances!” a man yelled into the next pause. “Nobody needs to get hurt. We just want the girl!”
I met her gaze. “You recognize that voice?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Give us the girl!”
“Never!” I yelled back, wanting to reassure her that I wouldn’t send her out there no matter what she’d done.
“Zack, let’s think about this,” Rory said. “She’s putting all three of us, our cabin, and all of its contents at risk.”
I stared at him, incredulous. “Its contents?” How were any of the contents, or even the whole of the damn cabin, more important than Frances? “No. Handing Frances over isn’t an option. You’re the idea guy, Rory. What does your little book say about being under siege?”
“Avoid it,” Rory said. “But Sun Tzu was referring to besieging cities, not being besieged. He said there’d be heavy losses.”
“So we have the advantage.”
Rory snorted.
“What are our assets?” Frances asked.
“Lots of guns, and lots of ammo,” I answered.
Rory’s eyes lit up. “The catapults!”
“They’re out front,” I pointed out. “How’re you planning on getting to them?”
“Well, somebody’d need to create a diversion, obviously. And if someone were to create a diversion, there’s also the Jeep and its rockets.”
“Your Jeep has rockets?” Frances asked.
Gunshots obscured my affirmative.
Afterward, the guy yelled again. “Frances! I know you’re in there!”
“Maybe we can negotiate with them. I’m guessing you took something of theirs?” I asked Frances.
“I told you, I don’t know who it is, and I don’t know what they want.” And she appeared to be telling the truth.
“Well… fuck.” There went that plan.
“We need to drive them off,” Rory said.
I gazed at him for a moment, then scuttled across the kitchen, keeping low. I snagged a frying pan off the counter, and lifted it slowly into sight of the window.
Clang. The thing spun out of my grip, stinging my fingers.
Shaking them out, I crossed back to Rory. “How’re we supposed to drive them off, if we can’t see them? Are you gonna stick your head up in a window? I’m not sticking my head up.”
“Well, we can’t just sit here. That doesn’t make for good TV, Zack.”
“Will you put that down?” I hissed. “There’s a very good chance we’ll be shooting at people, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned from social media, it’s that when you do something like shooting people, you don’t document it, Rory.”
“It’d be self-defense,” Rory argued, reversing the camera on his phone. Huddled against the wall, he announced, “We’re under siege. Day one. Our attackers have shot out the windows. They’re saying they want the girl,” he added, turning the lens toward Frances.
“Hey,” she protested, trying to cover herself with nothing but a baby goat. She was still naked.
I tackled Rory. “Give it to me.”
“We’ve started turning against one another,” Rory panted, squirming away.
Opting to stay with Frances rather than chase my brother, I let him go. I pulled my T-shirt over my head and handed it to her.
“What we’re learning today,” Rory continued, “is the consequences of building catapults outside one’s fortifications. If we live through this, we shall have to erect walls…”
Frances’s head popped through my neck hole. “I could just give myself up.”
“No!” I yelled overtop of Rory’s “Yes!”
She saw my determined look and sighed. “At the very least, we should seek high ground.”
“No, no,” said Rory. “We gotta go down.”
I looked from him to Frances, undecided. She’d moved to the base of the stairs, and I took a step to follow.
“You would choose her over me, your brother?” Rory asked. When I didn’t immediately answer, he belly-crawled toward me. “We shouldn’t split up. Didn’t horror movies teach you anything?” he demanded, making a grab for my ankle.
“Neither of us fit that stereotype. We’ll be fine,” I said, trying to shake him off.
“You’re a young, lusty couple,” Rory argued. “You’d stop to have sex somewhere unwise, and then BAM! I hate to break it to you, Zack, but sometimes you’re too stupid to live.”
Frances glared at him through the railing’s vertical supports. “Shut up,” she growled, “before I shoot you myself.”
Rory averted his eyes. “The villainess never lives,” he muttered.
“Not true,” I said. “Sometimes, she’s so taken with the hero that she switches sides.” I met Frances’s eyes, and only then realized what I’d said.
“Yeah, and does one final good deed, usually at the loss of her life,” Rory said. He sighed. “I just can’t believe you’d rather follow Frances upstairs on a fool’s mission, than me, to the bunker.”
FRANCES
I paused on the stairs, looking to Zack. “Bunker?”
“Yep. This way,” Rory said.
I adjusted the goat in my arms as Rory crossed to their crusty little computer. He picked up a pool cue that’d been leaning in the corner, then poked the tip of it into the trash as though trying to spear one of those stuck-together tissues. He tried again, and again, stabbing as if his target had grown legs and was trying to scuttle away.
“Ha!” Rory said, and the little desk swung away into the wall with a hydraulic hiss. Stowing the pool cue, Rory descended into the shadowy opening.
Shocked, I stared after him, following only when Zack grasped my wrist and pulled me along.
The lights faded on. “Welcome, Rory,” a disembodied feminine voice crooned. “You’re looking positively virile today.”
“Why thank you, Cassie,” Rory answered. “You say the nicest things.”
We reached the bottom, and a clean white floor stretched out before us. The ceiling was low, but the room was wide. Tables full of kegs and glass bottles filled one side, while rows of industrial-looking lockers lined the other.
“This is where we do our brewing,” Zack said.
“Where we keep all the good stuff, really,” Rory said, spinning around with an impish grin and a flourish. “Welcome… to The Vault. Tell me, what flavor are you in the mood for today? Biological? Incendiary?”
“Wait. Weapons?” I wrinkled my nose. “You’re not planning to just sit down here and wait them out? You’re still planning to fight?”
Rory returned my frown. “Well… yeah. If we stay down here, they could burn down the cabin. We’ve gotta counter-attack; I was thinking from behind.”
“I think non-lethal would be best,” Zack said. He pushed a button on the wall, and the ceiling swung back into place over the stairs.
Then he crossed to one of the lockers and pulled out something rigid and black. After I’d set Puck down, he tossed it my way. A bullet-proof vest. He tossed another to Rory, then pulled on his own.
Rory threw open another locker and tsked. “Choices, choices.”
Zack reached past him and grabbed a shotgun. “I’ll take this, and some flash-bangs, please.”
“The taser shotgun, eh? Good choice. Let
’s see what else we have here. Long-range acoustic device, water cannon, invisible pain ray, laser shooter, tear gas—”
“Why do you even have all this?” I asked.
“This is in case we ever again find ourselves at the wrong end of an angry mob,” Rory explained.
“‘Again’?” I said, my voice faint. But then I shook my head. “Never mind. Have you got a dart gun?”
“No, no. That’s Gary’s shtick. Aha! This’ll be perfect for you, Frances.” He turned, and handed me a tiny can of pepper spray. “Breast cancer awareness,” he said, probably because it was pink.
I stared at it.
“Need help with your vest?” Zack asked. I was still in shock, gazing into that weapons locker, and stood still long enough for him to strap me in. Then he handed me the blinding laser gun to supplement my mace.
“And the tear gas?” I asked hopefully. Zack gave me a couple canisters over Rory’s objections.
Once all three of us were locked, loaded, and bristling with non-lethal weapons—and a regular gun each, in case our attackers got particularly rowdy—Rory led the way to a door hidden behind the stairs. The steel door swung open, and…
Puck brushed by my ankles to gallop on ahead, demonstrating the passageway beyond’s purpose. “You guys have a fucking escape tunnel.”
“Yep,” Rory said cheerfully.
The ceiling was even lower than in the bunker, so that the brothers had to stoop as they entered the dim hall. The walls were damp cinderblock, while the concrete floor had LED lighting to either side, just like the aisle on a commercial passenger jet.
A couple hundred feet later, another set of stairs rose up to a trap door. I pulled Puck out of the way and swung him up into my arms, and Zack put his back into pushing upward. Above us, something clattered.
Zack froze, and we all waited breathlessly for some sign that we’d been heard. But there were no shouts, no gunfire.
He heaved the door open, and we emerged into darkness that smelled like hydraulic fluid, motor oil, and sawdust. The only light came from a high line of windows in the back. The shop.
Zack crossed to the front door.
“Carefully,” Rory hissed, crowding in behind him.
Third in line, I watched as Zack quietly turned the knob, and slowly cracked the door. He peered through for a moment, then pulled it open another fraction for a wider view. He shook his head. “I don’t see them.”
Rory tugged at him till he gave up his spot. “Their boat’s still there,” he said, looking across the yard. “No movement in the trees… I’ll betcha anything they went inside.” He pulled back and rubbed his hands together with anticipation.
“And that means?”
“We get to use our booby traps,” Rory replied, opening what looked like a circuit breaker panel cover. It wasn’t, unless breakers now came in rows of red buttons. His finger hovered over one labeled ‘Slip‘n Slide’.
“Wait, wait,” Zack said. “That won’t be enough to chase ’em off. Frances, can I borrow your tear gas, please?”
“But, I…”
Zack retrieved the canisters from my vest. “Wait for my signal,” he told Rory, then he slipped out the door.
I peered after him, worried that someone might see him. Luckily, there was no movement from the cabin as he darted across the lawn. Zack tossed a can of tear gas in the broken-out kitchen window, then ran around the building while readying another.
“Has he given the signal yet?”
“I don’t know what the signal is,” I fretted. Zack was way too brave for his own good.
From behind the cabin, somebody screamed. I didn’t know if it was the signal, and I didn’t care. All I could think was that might be Zack screaming.
“Do it,” I told Rory even as I plunged into the brightness of the yard.
WHOOMPH. The concussion brought me to a sudden halt as the roofing on the cabin seemed to bow outward. Then, the eaves started to drip.
From inside came shouts of alarm and disbelief. Then, a rapid thudthudthudthud CRASH, followed by another.
“Ah, good,” Rory said, stepping up beside me. “They’d made it upstairs.”
The guys inside were coughing and gagging, probably because of the tear gas.
The front door slammed open and birthed a half-dozen wet men, along with a gush of clear fluid. The first one slipped on the step, and the next guy fell over him, and so on and so forth, so that they basically spewed out of the cabin in a windmilling mass of arms, legs, and rifles.
Zack snagged their weapons as they lay there moaning. Arms full, he came back to us and dropped the glistening mess of steel at our feet.
Was that… Shifting Puck to one arm, I bent and swiped my finger over one of the shining barrels, and it came away slippery. It was!
Zack chucked a flash-bang grenade at our ‘visitors’. I struggled to contain a flailing Puck as it flashed and banged, and they screamed and scrambled in the slippery grass.
“Hey, Frances,” Zack called back over his shoulder. “You recognize them? Because I think I do.” He lobbed another grenade, herding them toward the river.
Now that he mentioned it… They were the men who’d shot down our plane.
They fled down the lawn, still coughing and gagging and running into each other and falling down with Zack walking calmly after. One of them went down, and when he rolled over, he was aiming a semi-automatic handgun at Zack.
Heart in my throat, I started to yell a warning.
Zack shot him, and the guy fell back, stiff as a board and trembling wildly.
“Oh,” I said, relaxing as Zack tucked the taser shotgun into the holster slung across his back.
“You can’t leave your guy here,” Zack yelled. “You gotta take him!”
But the goons were in a blind panic, leaving their fallen comrade as they made like penguins on their way to their boat.
Zack bent to pick up the tased guy. His grip slipped as the guy squirmed, but he managed to heave him off the ground and onto his shoulder, then ran to the river. He skidded to a halt on the rocks just inches from the water, the weight of his burden almost toppling them both in.
Our attackers were already twenty feet offshore and motoring away at full throttle.
Zack shook his fist. “And stay away!” he yelled.
“I like it when Zack’s on my side,” Rory confided.
I nodded, watching Zack cart the guy up from the beach. “Tell me about the lube.”
“That barrel up in the attic was rigged to blow,” Rory said, bending to inspect the rifles.
“Yeah, but… why?” The eaves were still dripping. I couldn’t even imagine the mess inside.
“Mostly to incapacitate any intruders on the stairs, which worked like a charm. Hamper their movements, and—”
“Confuse them,” Zack finished with a proud grin. He slung the man he held onto the ground, then planted a foot on his hip to roll him face-up. The guy was young and pale, with close-trimmed hair, and a couple symbols tattooed on his neck. He blinked up at us, still stunned. “What do we do with him?” Zack asked.
“We should question him,” I said. “See why they’re after me.”
Rory shook his head. “No, no. We should put a threatening note on his chest and float him downstream on a homemade raft.”
Zack put his foot on the guy’s chest, pinning him down as he began feebly to struggle, then looked at his brother. “Do you have a homemade raft?”
“No, but…” Rory’s face lit up. “We could catapult him into the river.”
“No,” I said, putting the kibosh on that. “We’re going to question him, see what he knows. Zack, hold him. I’ll go get the ratchet straps.” First, I put Puck in his pen. Then I ran inside and slipped and slid my way to my room. Retrieving the discarded straps from my dresser, I felt a thrill as I gripped the smooth orange nylon. Then I headed back out, slowing as I heard Rory.
“We should get rid of the guy,” he was insisting. “Anything he might k
now is just bound to upset her.” He took our captive by the ankles and tugged.
“Are you kidding me?” Zack asked, grabbing the guy’s wrists to keep his brother from dragging him toward the river. “Usually you’re all about getting information. ‘Knowledge is power’,” he mocked.
“I’ve been interrogated too many times,” Rory said. “I have PTSD. I refuse to have a hand in this.”
“Then, don’t,” Zack said. “Go inside and fill some catapult orders. We’ve got this.”
“Nuh-uh. I’ll know you’re out here, hurting him.” He pulled on the guy’s legs until our captive was suspended between them, his butt scraping the ground.
“This isn’t like you,” Zack said.
“How can you say that?” Rory asked. “Is it so hard to believe that I’ve simply grown a conscience?”
I snorted, giving up on eavesdropping. “Yes,” I answered. I tossed Zack one of the straps, then pushed Rory back so that I could tie our captive’s ankles.
Rory chewed his lip, eyes big as he watched us secure the guy.
“Hey,” I said, looking down into his hazy light-brown eyes. I tapped his cheek and he moaned, still pretty out of it. So, I grabbed an empty bucket from next to the shop, dipped it half-full of icy river water, and threw it on him.
Our captive came to with a shout.
I knelt on his sopping chest and grabbed him by the ears. “Hello there.”
He blinked up at me.
I treated him to my evil smile. “Why were you after me?”
His eyes widened, then flickered all around, glancing off me to hit Zack, who’d knelt next to his head, and then beyond, to Rory. He whimpered.
“We could hook him up to the generator,” Zack offered. “I’ve got jumper cables.”
I rode out the guy’s struggles. When he threatened to buck me off, I leaned forward, pressing a knee into his throat.
“Guys, we’re trying to turn over a new leaf, remember?” Rory said. “Upstanding citizens don’t torture people. How are our neighbors ever going to take us seriously if you—”
“We could lock him in a room with some hungry ermines,” Zack said.
“That’d take too long.” I ran a nail along the guy’s jaw, making his eyes roll with fear. I’d learned some things from my dad, most of them things I wasn’t proud of. My ‘training’ told me this guy wasn’t a hard case. “You want to tell us why, don’t you?” I coaxed.