“Come with me.”
“No.”
“Come to High Fields.”
She shook her head. What was she supposed to say? She couldn’t explain her plan to him. If he even suspected that she was contemplating going to Austin, he would probably hog-tie her and drag her to High Fields. But she would find a way. There were pharmaceutical distribution centers in Austin, and she would beg or barter. One way or another, she would get more medicine for Carter.
She pulled in a deep breath, smiled, and said, “You can’t bully me into changing my mind.”
Max’s hand was still on the door handle, where hers had been. He was so close that she wondered if he would kiss her—and instantly she was in high school again, surrendering her heart and dreams to him.
But he didn’t kiss her.
Instead, he scooted back to his side of the truck and started the engine. “Will you at least think about it? If not for me, then for my mom and pop?”
“Of course.” That wasn’t a lie. She always considered Max’s suggestions, but this time she knew he was wrong and she was right.
He flashed her the cocky smile of his youth and drove toward their street. It was when they had turned the corner and were approaching the roadblock that they saw a jeep hurtling toward them, a police car and SUV in hot pursuit, and then they heard the ring of gunfire.
FIFTY-THREE
After the officer shot out the jeep’s two rear tires, everyone started shouting at once.
Mrs. Plumley had her shotgun raised to her shoulder. She stared through its sight at the jeep that had careened to a stop in front of their roadblock. The shots had come from a police officer’s vehicle, and he had stopped, jumped out of the cruiser, aimed at the tires, and hopped back in the vehicle when he saw that he’d incapacitated the jeep. It was possibly the coolest thing Carter had ever seen.
The officer and SUV driver braked suddenly, their vehicles positioned nose to nose across the road to block any possible escape. Both of the drivers jumped out of their vehicles and raised their weapons. To his left, Max drove up—and suddenly Carter’s mother was running toward them, screaming for Carter to get down.
Before he could say anything, Max had knocked his mom to the ground, covering her body with his.
The person driving the jeep raised his hands in surrender, and Carter noticed someone slumped over beside him in the vehicle.
“Keep them up high!” The officer slowly approached the vehicle from the left, and the SUV driver approached from the right, his handgun raised and aimed at the driver of the jeep.
Max remained on top of Carter’s mom, who was squirming and waving, still trying to get him to drop down. But he was on patrol. He didn’t think he was supposed to hide behind the cab of the truck. So instead he raised his granddad’s old Winchester Model 94 and trained it on the guy driving the jeep.
“Just keep him in your sights, Carter. Finger next to the trigger but not on it. We don’t want anyone shot accidentally.” Mrs. Plumley didn’t sound at all rattled. Her steadiness helped to calm Carter’s nerves, which were jumping like popcorn in a pan.
The officer opened the door of the jeep with his left hand, his right still holding his service revolver, which was pointed at the driver. He pulled the guy out, pushed him to the ground, and then he cuffed his hands behind him. The man was large with a giant belly, and Carter had the random thought that it must have been a tight fit behind the steering wheel. From where he stood, he could also see a string of tattoos reaching from the man’s shirtsleeve to his wrist.
Max jumped up and ran to the passenger side of the jeep.
“We need a paramedic over here!” he shouted.
Mrs. Plumley nodded toward Carter, so he put down his rifle and picked up the radio. “We’ve got… uh… a situation.”
Frank came back over the radio. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“Some guy just ran through the roadblock in a jeep. The police have the driver on the ground, but the other guy in the jeep—Max says he needs a doctor.”
“Paramedics are on their way. Do you need assistance?”
Plumley shook her head, so Carter said, “No. Everything’s under control now.” His heart was still hammering. He could feel the sweat slicking his palms, but no one seemed to be in danger.
Carter heard the approach of the ambulance at the same moment his mother made it to the back of the pickup. She jumped up into the bed and ran her hands up and down his arms.
“Are you okay?”
“Mom, I’m fine.”
“No one shot you?”
“Mom, stop.” He put one hand on each of her shoulders and looked directly into her eyes. “I am fine.”
She nodded twice and sank into the bed of the truck. “I think I had a heart attack.”
At that point Dr. Bhatti arrived on the scene. Carter had no idea who had called him. Maybe he had just heard the ambulance, which was pulling up. The ambulance cut its sirens and its lights.
A crowd of folks was steadily gathering on the sidewalk, but everyone was silent—stunned and trying to piece together what they were seeing.
Bhatti was halfway inside the jeep, but he popped back out and shook his head.
“GSW. Abdominal cavity. No exit wound.”
The paramedics had a gurney next to the jeep. One began to open an emergency medical kit, but Bhatti stopped him. “Save your supplies.”
The officer had the driver of the jeep standing now. He heard Bhatti and began to scream. “It’s my brother. You have to help my brother!”
Bhatti didn’t even flinch.
The paramedics waited, like frozen statues.
“Sir, I need you to calm down.” The officer held the handcuffed man’s arm with one hand. His other hand remained close to his gun.
Max emerged from the other side of the jeep and walked toward Dr. Bhatti.
“Is there anything we can do for him?” Max asked.
“No. There isn’t.”
The paramedics glanced at one another. Carter’s mom popped back up, looking over the cab of the truck. She stood next to Carter and clutched his arm as if she was afraid he might jump out of the truck and run to the center of the scene.
The driver began to weep. “You have to help my brother.”
“We can at least stabilize him,” one of the paramedics said.
“And then what?” Bhatti asked. “If there was an exit wound, I might agree with you, but there isn’t.”
“Standard procedures are—”
“Do you think we can perform surgery with no electricity? Would you like me to cut the bullet out of him with a pocketknife? Do we have blood ready for a transfusion, because he’s going to need one. How do you plan to stop the bleeding and prevent infection?”
“We can’t let him die,” the other paramedic argued.
Max climbed back into the jeep as Bhatti argued with the paramedics.
“It’s a moot point,” Max said.
He walked toward the man who had been driving. “I’m sorry. Your brother is dead.”
The man’s face turned red. Carter thought maybe he was going to have a stroke right there in the middle of the street. Instead, he sank to his knees, hands still handcuffed behind him, and sobbed—a low, gut-wrenching sound that made Carter’s hands shake.
FIFTY-FOUR
Mrs. Plumley and Carter remained on patrol for another hour. They had both volunteered to serve an extra shift when their replacements, a man and wife, had taken ill. Probably food poisoning, according to Frank.
“Careful what you eat,” he’d cautioned Carter and Mrs. Plumley. “Most of the meat has gone bad now.”
It took the paramedics less than ten minutes to load the body and drive off to the morgue.
The police chief arrived, cleared the street, and moved the driver back toward their roadblock. The man collapsed on the tailgate.
Chief Bryant asked Carter’s mom and Max to stay. “Everyone else go home,” he said to the crowd. “Th
ere’s nothing to see here, and if you impede my investigation I will arrest you.”
People slowly shuffled off. Carter glanced around to see who remained—the two men who had chased the jeep, Max and his mom, Mrs. Plumley, and the man whose brother had died.
“You can uncuff him,” Chief Bryant said. “There’s five of us, and he’s unarmed.”
The officer grunted in agreement and pulled the key from his pocket, warning the man not to try anything.
“Name?”
“Toby Nix.”
His mom looked at Max, and Max nodded in agreement to something.
“You know him?” Bryant asked.
Max cleared his throat, and then he explained, “We were hiking at Colorado Bend when the aurora made its first appearance. We stopped in at Sad Sam’s to see what was happening. Mr. Nix was there, explaining to the group what he’d heard over his ham radio.”
Nix wiped at his eyes. “I don’t remember you.”
“A lot has happened since then,” Shelby said. “And the place was very crowded.”
Nix pulled in a deep breath and continued to brush away the tears streaming down his face. Carter noticed how badly the man’s hands were shaking.
“We thought we were prepared.”
“We?”
Carter returned his attention to the road in front of them, assuming the same stance as Mrs. Plumley. But he could hear every word between the man and the police chief.
“Folks at Bend.”
“So what happened?”
“We’d set up a perimeter at both access points.”
Bryant named two county road numbers.
“Yeah.”
“Perimeter? So you weren’t letting anyone through?”
“They could go around. It’s no different from what you have right here.”
“It’s completely different. We’re cutting off access to our neighborhoods, to folks’ homes. We’re not blocking roads that provide a way through Abney—at least not yet.”
This was the first Carter had heard about possible roadblocks on the outskirts of town. He understood the need to protect their homes, but did they want to keep everyone out of Abney? And what about the people inside Abney who wanted to leave? It wasn’t as if he had anywhere he needed to go, but the questions swirled in his mind nonetheless.
“We’re not a town. We don’t have the resources like you folks here in Abney have.” When Bryant didn’t argue with him, Mr. Nix continued. “Folks had to go around. Those were the rules. The guys who hit us, they’d scoped us out a couple of times—coming close enough to see how many men and what type of weapons we had, but not close enough for us to warn them away.”
“When did they hit?”
“Maybe an hour ago, as the light was slanting from the west—makes it difficult to see well. They slammed into our vehicles and started shooting.”
“What were they after?” Max asked.
“I couldn’t care less, and I guess we’ll never know.”
“They’re dead?”
Carter was still facing forward, but he heard Bryant’s voice take on a harder edge. He glanced at Mrs. Plumley, who shrugged.
“Yes, they are.”
“You killed them?”
“I didn’t, but the men at our roadblock did.”
Bryant let out a heavy sigh. “That’s murder, Mr. Nix.”
“No. It’s self-defense.”
“Defense of a town is the authorities’ responsibility.”
“So you only have officers manning your roadblocks?”
“We aren’t shooting people.”
“But you would.” The man stood. When he did, the truck bounced up a little. “If someone came in barrels blazing, you would.”
Bryant had no answer for that. Finally, he said, “I’m going to need you to wait in my police car.”
“Are you going to arrest me?”
“That will be for the mayor to decide.”
Nix walked around their truck. The man who had been driving the SUV guided him to the back of the police cruiser.
Before he ducked in, Nix said, “I’m glad they’re dead. If they weren’t, I’d go find them and I’d put bullets in their heads myself. They killed my brother, and I’m glad they paid for it with their lives.”
No one spoke for a moment, and then Bryant turned toward Carter and asked, “Got any water in that cooler, son?”
Carter fetched him a bottle. They would need to start filling them from the springs soon. He wasn’t looking forward to that.
“For what it’s worth, I don’t recommend you arrest him,” Max said.
“How can I not arrest him?” Bryant asked.
“First of all, according to Mr. Nix, he wasn’t even there at the time of the shooting. Once he’d arrived on scene, the event was over.”
“But he knows who did it.”
“Maybe. Are you going out to Bend to find them? Because I can assure you those people are armed to the teeth.”
“You should have seen them in Sad Sam’s,” Carter’s mom added. “Nearly everyone was carrying.”
“We can’t allow thugs to intimidate us, and you both know that.”
“True.” Max had taken on what Carter thought of as his lawyer voice. It was easy enough to imagine him arguing in front of a judge instead of in the middle of the road. “At this point, though, it’s hearsay, which is generally inadmissible.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this,” Bryant grumbled.
“If we were talking about a clear case of murder, I’d agree that you should book him. But it sounds, smells, and looks like self-defense. I’d say we have enough on our hands at the moment.”
“And if I book him?” Bryant asked.
“He’ll need a lawyer.”
It wasn’t an outright dare, but it was close enough. Even Carter understood that Max had won round one, and he’d probably win the rest too. He knew the law, and he wasn’t afraid to call it like he saw it.
“Take him to Perkins,” Max said. “Under martial law, she’s authorized to make such decisions.”
“For as long as she’s mayor,” Bryant said.
There was a pause, a beat where all Carter heard was the thump of his heart against his chest.
Max practically growled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Stone is gathering support to force her resignation.”
“That’s not something they can force.”
“True, but if he gets enough folks on his side, we both know that Perkins will step down. She doesn’t have the stomach for a political fight under these circumstances.”
“You’d better do everything in your power to see that doesn’t happen, because you do not want Eugene Stone in charge of our town.”
Bryant grunted and walked away.
Carter glanced back at his mom. Her expression was one of exhaustion and, well, sadness. She kissed him on the cheek, which was embarrassing to say the least, and then she murmured, “I’ll have dinner ready when you get home.” That made him smile. Another of her famously balanced meals.
He could always count on his mom to keep the important things front and center, and in her opinion, eating was pretty important. It was something she’d impressed on him since he was a small child—carrying around his fanny pack of glucose testing strips, a compact machine that a five-year-old could operate, and small pieces of candy in case he needed them.
Folks were dying on the streets of Abney, and his mom was still balancing his meals.
Helping her from the truck, Max said good night and they both walked away. The last Carter saw of Toby Nix, Officer Bryant was driving him toward downtown.
FIFTY-FIVE
The mayor called a town meeting for the next evening.
Shelby and Carter worked on their garden during the morning, before he had to leave to help with the latrine. She couldn’t help worrying about her son, but she had to admit that he seemed fine both physically and emotionally—even after the tragedy of
the night before. She shuddered to think he might have been hurt. When she’d tried to convince him he didn’t need to serve on the patrol, he had only patted her head and said, “It’ll be okay, Mom.”
Shelby covered a four-hour shift at Green Acres before hurrying home to throw together a quick dinner. She was used to meticulously balancing Carter’s meals and knew the experts’ recommendations by heart.
Moderate your carbohydrate intake.
Make your plate colorful.
Watch your calories.
Remember to include fiber.
Easier said than done when you had limited supplies. What would she do in a month? Or six months? She pushed the worries aside and allowed herself a moment of satisfaction when Carter looked at dinner and said, “Weird, but cool.” Their meal included tuna sandwiches for protein, using the last of the bread. She’d added canned green beans for fiber and unsweetened yellow peaches for color.
Who was she kidding? It was a terrible dinner. She needed to do some meal planning, but it would have to wait until after the town meeting.
Max knocked on their door at six p.m. By the time they reached downtown, Patrick and Bianca had joined them. It was good to be together again. Even if things weren’t the same, it reminded Shelby that she could always count on the friendship of the people surrounding her.
She spotted Mr. and Mrs. Smitty across the square and waved. They waved in return and gave Shelby a thumbs-up to let her know all was well. She supposed that meant they had found a place to stay. The last she’d heard, Pastor Tony had been working on it. Had it been only four days since they’d picked the couple up from the side of the road? She’d had a niggling feeling, even then, that what they were facing was unprecedented.
They found a place to sit on the concrete steps near Max’s office. “Back in a few,” Max said, and then he walked off toward a group of men standing by the mayor.
Shelby introduced herself to the man and woman on her left, people she’d never seen before. She wasn’t sure if they were residents of Abney.
“I’m Maria Mendoza.” The woman was shorter than Shelby, with long black hair cascading down her back. She was also in the last trimester of her pregnancy from the looks of things. “This is my husband, Alejandro.”
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