Maybe his life was changing for the better.
That thought had just crossed his mind when he turned the corner onto his street. He glanced up and saw their house on the right. And suddenly to the south, the sky lit up and the ground shook.
SIXTY
Shelby flew out of her house. She stopped only to snatch up the backpack and thread her arms through the straps. She heard a second explosion, ran to the middle of the street to stare up at the sky, and saw—nothing. Glancing around, she spotted Carter at the end of the street and ran toward him.
“What’s happening?” he shouted.
“I don’t know!” Shelby stood frozen, her heartbeat pounding in her veins. She motioned to Carter to hurry. “We need to get inside.”
“It’s not here,” someone shouted. “Heard it over the CB. The fighting is to the south, in Croghan.”
And suddenly Max was there, as he’d always been there—calm, steady, a haven in her storm.
“Are you all right?” Max asked Carter.
“I’m fine. I was walking home from Kaitlyn’s and I heard—”
Another detonation rocked the air.
Max stepped closer as the street began to fill with people. “We can see better from the water tower.”
“What do we want to see?”
“If they’re headed this way.”
“Why…” Shelby felt all the blood drain from her face, and suddenly the world swayed in front of her.
“Don’t faint on me.” Max reached out and steadied her. “I can go without you. I’ll come back and—”
“I’m going.” She wanted to tell Carter to stay home, but that would have been a waste of energy. He had already turned and was pushing his way through the crowd.
They ran down the street, passed the roadblocks, and made a right turn. Though it was nearly dark, nearly past curfew, no one stopped them or paid them any attention at all. They hurried on, and then they could see the water tower, the highest spot in Abney.
She could make no sense of what was happening. As they ran, a dozen images flitted through her mind.
Hiking at Bend and suddenly seeing the aurora.
Climbing the water tower with Max.
Fighting the downtown fire.
Max throwing her to the ground as she tried to reach Carter amid the gunfire.
The faces of Bianca and Patrick and Max and Carter.
And now the town to their south was being attacked? How could she protect her son from that?
But Carter hadn’t needed her when the jeep had careened to a stop in front of him and the shooting had started. At some point in the last week he had become a man, shedding any last traces of the child he had been.
And Max? As they hurried up the hill, Shelby realized that Max had been and always would be a part of their family. It didn’t matter if they lived next door to each other or not. It didn’t even matter if society was crumbling around them. Max was the one person she could count on, no matter the situation.
A few folks had gathered around the tower, but no one had thought to climb it. Or maybe they were all afraid of heights.
“Stay here.” Max squeezed her arm once before he hurried to the ladder on the water tower. Hand over hand, he began to climb.
“Guy’s like a monkey,” Carter muttered. He turned to Shelby. “Is someone actually bombing Croghan? Why? And how?”
“The women’s prison is there,” said a young guy sporting a scraggly beard and holding a toddler in his arms. “Maybe they… maybe they overthrew the guards.”
“They wouldn’t have bombs, though.”
Another explosion rocked the evening. Darkness had fallen, and Shelby glanced up, dazzled by millions of pinpricks of light. They reminded her of the past, of countless evenings she had spent camping with Carter when he was younger.
She was quickly brought back to the present by the smell of smoke drifting their way.
Max had made it to the ledge that encircled the water tower. Now a few teenagers were standing at the base, craning their necks, and staring up at Max.
“Definitely Croghan,” Max called out. “Quite a few structures are burning.”
“And the explosions?”
“I can’t tell where they’re coming from.” Max had been staring toward the south, now he glanced down. “But someone is attacking them.”
“Where is their police force?” The man switched his baby to his left shoulder. The child stared at Shelby with wide blue eyes and drooled on her dad’s shoulder.
“Police aren’t going to be able to help with this. Where’s the state guard?” asked a woman about Shelby’s age.
“By the time they get a message to Austin, the battle will be over.” Max took one last look, and then he began to climb down. One of the teenagers pulled out a flashlight and shone it on the ladder’s rungs.
Shelby glanced around for Bianca or Patrick, but she didn’t see them. She was too short, and the crowd was too large. She was lucky to keep Carter in her sights. Her death grip on his arm helped.
Max had rejoined them when an Abney police cruiser pulled up. He left his headlights on, casting a beam out over the crowd. Shelby didn’t know the officer who stepped out. He was probably fresh out of college—if he had gone to college.
“Chief Bryant is asking for help.”
Everyone stopped talking at once.
“Croghan is under attack, and whoever is doing it might turn this direction next. We need shotguns, rifles, anything with a scope. If you don’t have those, bring your handguns.” He swiped at the sweat pouring down his face. “Though if they get that close, God help us.”
“Where do we go?” an older man asked.
“Trucks will come by each of the checkpoints to pick you up. They’ll take you out to the city limit line.”
“We’re not going to Croghan?” another man called out.
“No. Croghan’s gone.”
Shelby thought he looked more like a kid than when he’d first stepped out of the cruiser. He seemed scared and uncertain. “We can’t save them, but maybe we can save Abney,” he said.
Some people stood around talking, asking more questions that no one could answer, and staring off toward the glow on the horizon—Croghan burning. Shelby realized with a start that Carter and Max were already pushing their way back through the crowd.
“Where are you going?”
“Home,” Max said, not bothering to slow his long steps.
Shelby ran to catch up.
“I have an extra box of ammo,” Carter was saying. “Should I take it?”
“Yes.” Shelby matched their stride. “We need to take everything we can find.”
“Whoa.” Carter stopped in the middle of the street. “I’m not sure he meant for moms to come.”
“We’re all adults here,” Max said. “Your mom’s right. Gather your weapon, your ammo, and meet me outside in five minutes.”
SIXTY-ONE
The last thing Max wanted was Shelby standing guard, standing in harm’s way.
But if she was with them, he’d be able to keep an eye on her.
He grabbed his rifle and a box of ammo, and he wondered at the fact that he could be so calm. They were quite possibly under siege. How many had died in Croghan? Why the massive show of firepower? Had they resisted?
And who was the aggressor?
All good questions, but they probably wouldn’t have answers for several hours. In the meantime, he wasn’t going to stand by and let anyone burn up Abney. Not their town. Not his friends and neighbors.
By the time he stepped outside, Shelby and Carter were waiting for him.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Shelby muttered. Her hands didn’t shake as she opened up the backpack, wrapped her Browning pistol in a towel, and slipped the entire thing inside.
Carter was carrying his granddad’s Winchester rifle and an extra box of ammunition.
As they walked silently toward the end of the street, the occasional sound o
f explosions continued to reach them. Max wondered what the point was of the ongoing attack against Croghan. What was left to burn?
They reached the roadblock and found more than a dozen people milling around, waiting to defend Abney.
Max was surprised when Mayor Perkins showed up driving her pickup. She looked like she hadn’t slept since the flare.
She got out of the pickup to address the crowd, raising her voice to be heard above them. “This is a one-way trip, at least until sunrise. If you change your mind, you walk back—so be certain this is what you want to do.”
No one hesitated. By the time Shelby and Carter climbed up into the truck bed, there was barely room for Max.
“You can ride up front with me, Max.” Perkins hopped back behind the wheel without waiting for an answer.
As soon as she pulled out onto the road, Perkins started talking. “Our reports tell us that Croghan has major fires on two sides.”
“Who’s behind it?”
“Supposedly it started at the prison—you can imagine how miserable it’s been in those cells.”
“Do you believe that a group of women who are incarcerated for substance abuse started the fires? Carried out an assault on the town?”
“Desperate times, Max. Desperate times.” She ground the gears from second to third.
Instead of arguing with her, he changed tactics. “Did the inmates take over the prison?”
“It’s possible. It held more than six hundred inmates.”
“There’s at least a hundred guards—”
“Twenty-five showed up. All it took was one slip in protocol, which happened approximately three hours ago. Once the inmates had the keys, it was all over.”
“Fatalities?”
“A skull fracture to the guard who turned her back on one of the prisoners. The rest escaped with cuts and scrapes.” Perkins frowned as she hit fourth gear.
At the speed she was driving, they would be at the edge of town within a couple of minutes. Max needed to know what they were walking into.
“Where are the explosions coming from?”
“At the same time the inmates were fighting their way free on the west side, a different group hit the east side.” A wave of uncertainty passed over Perkins’s face. It made her look vulnerable. “The Croghan police responded with force.”
“Which group did they shoot at?”
“The east group seemed the most dangerous. Someone had tipped the police off that they were led by a few die-hard survivalists. You can imagine how well equipped they are. A week ago you could purchase anything from a rocket launcher to a hand grenade on the Internet.”
Max wasn’t sure about that, but he didn’t interrupt. Perkins was finally giving him useful information.
“Turned into an all-out battle. The police were pushed back, people panicked, next thing we knew the place was on fire. We heard their mayor put out a distress call to the governor—asking for state guard or anyone they could send.”
“And?”
“And the response, supposedly from the governor’s office, was that they would send help as soon as the situation in the capital was stabilized.”
Max wasn’t surprised in light of Ted Gordon’s attempted trip to Austin. “The people attacking from the east, what were they after?”
“Can’t say for sure. There’s a tortilla factory on the south side of town. Maybe they wanted that. Maybe they wanted to see if there was any money left in the bank or medical supplies in the drugstore.”
It was worse than Max had thought—an entire town wiped out in a matter of hours. But hadn’t he just told Shelby that men would be willing to kill for ammo or medical supplies? The worst-case scenario he had tried to warn her about was happening, and the only thing they could do was to pray and fight back.
Perkins pulled up to what looked like a mobile staging area. Before she stopped, she glanced at Max and said, “I don’t want to be right about this.”
“I’m not sure you are.”
“I care about the people of Abney, even though a fair number of them were willing to side with Eugene Stone.”
“Not enough, though, Nadine. You’re still mayor.”
She shrugged as if those days were in the past now. “We need to do everything we can to keep our town safe.”
As Max got out of the truck and rejoined Carter and Shelby, those words rang through his mind over and again. Keep our town safe. He wasn’t sure that was something they could do. They could pray. But hadn’t the citizens of Croghan prayed?
How many had been killed?
How many now had nowhere to live?
And for what? Some tortillas and Tylenol?
Beneath all of those questions was another, more profound one. Why did God allow such terrible things to happen?
He could maybe understand how a solar flare happened. Societies, even Christian societies, weren’t immune to the forces of nature. Tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, and more occurred every day. Their country had endured its fair share of natural disasters, along with a few terrorist attacks and the occasional stock market crisis.
But anarchy? Goons attacking their neighboring town?
On this side of the battle, men and women and yesterday’s children—he glanced at Carter—were defending what little remained.
A string of trucks had been parked nose-to-tailgate across the road. As they lined up behind the barricade, Max’s mind struggled with those questions. His thoughts drifted back to Pastor Tony’s sermon.
His love will endure—forever.
He is good, and his love will last forever.
Your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever.
SIXTY-TWO
For the first two hours, nothing happened.
The sound of explosions became less frequent, but smoke continued to drift toward them. People to the right and left of Max—including Carter and Shelby—checked and rechecked their weapons as the moon rose, casting shadows in front of them.
In the distance, Max heard the crackle of Bob Bryant’s radio. Five minutes later, the man was pulling him away from his position.
“That was Stone.”
“Eugene?”
“He’s in Croghan.” Bryant had opened the door to his police cruiser to snatch out a fluorescent vest. The dome light revealed that his face was flushed a bright red, and sweat beaded his forehead.
“I don’t understand.”
“He has a message for Perkins, but he says he’ll only give it to you.”
“Me?” Max shifted his rifle to his left hand.
“He trusts you for some reason. Here, put this on so no one will shoot you by mistake.”
“Eugene Stone doesn’t even like me. And what is he doing in Croghan?”
“Apparently he’s their new mayor.”
Bryant gestured for him to put the vest on, but Max wasn’t ready to take that step.
“Why doesn’t he talk to Perkins on the radio?”
“In his own words, he wants this done in writing so it will all be legal.”
“There’s nothing legal about what Stone is doing, and if I get close enough to take a piece of paper from him, I might not be able to restrain myself from using this rifle.”
Bryant slammed the door shut. The darkness masked his expression, but his tone left nothing to Max’s imagination. “Perkins isn’t going to agree to anything that Stone asks for, but this will buy us a little time. His directions are for you to walk straight down the middle of the highway for one mile—alone and unarmed. Take the paper he’s drawn up and tell him you’ll see what you can do. Try to stall.”
“What good is stalling?”
“We’re sending someone out to the Bar S Ranch.”
“For?”
“Jake Cooper has some AK-47s and comm equipment. And Stanley Hamilton is bringing more ammo.”
“And you’re going to use the AKs?”
“If we have to—yes.”
Max put on the vest and walked back to his posi
tion.
“Hold this for me.” He thrust the rifle into Carter’s hands.
Shelby moved to stop him, but he only shook his head. “I’ll be right back,” he whispered, and then he strode away from her. If he paused to think about what he was doing, he’d question his sanity.
Fortunately for Eugene Stone, he was not at the meeting place. Instead, he’d sent the city attorney for Croghan.
“You’re involved in this?” asked Max.
“Doesn’t mean I approve of it.” Randall Black was in his fifties and had always struck Max as a stand-up guy.
“So why are you doing it?”
“Because my family is in Croghan. I’ve lived there all my life, Max. I’m not ready to run away and let the people attacking us take what we’ve built.”
“That justifies siding with Stone?”
“I’m hardly doing that. You don’t know what we’ve been going through in Croghan.”
“I don’t need to know.”
“First the prison, then those thugs on the east side.”
“We can help you.”
“Eugene Stone stepped in and offered leadership when we had none. Our mayor wasn’t even in town when this thing started—still hasn’t returned. And the council has done nothing but bicker with one another.” He shoved the piece of paper into Max’s hands. “Take this. Take it to Nadine and talk some sense into her. She needs to agree to Stone’s requests so we don’t have another bloodbath. You’ve got two hours.”
Before Max could argue, Randall turned and walked off into the darkness.
But he didn’t need two hours. Bryant drove him to city hall, where Perkins had already convened the council. Calvin Green wasn’t present, so Max assumed he would be standing in as city attorney. He read the note aloud before handing it to the mayor. “As your legal counsel, I strongly advise you to reject Eugene’s demands. Respond firmly and with no question that you will not compromise.”
“We’re going to respond, but not with a note.”
The vote was unanimous. The citizens of Abney would stand and defend their town.
By the time he made it back to his position, Bryant was handing out AK-47s with night scopes to every third man. “If they approach with spotlights, switch your night scopes off,” he said.
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