Dave had an idea.
If they maintained their present course, they would walk past a gasoline tanker in the right hand lane. For sixty feet or so they would be blind to the south side of the road. Dave could change position, make it to the tree line, then line up his shot and wait for them to walk into his field of fire.
He might not get them all.
But he’d certainly even the odds a bit.
They still hadn’t seen him, crouched behind the Impala.
They appeared to be laughing and joking as they walked along. One of them nonchalantly walked with his rifle pointed at the ground.
Dave couldn’t believe this. How on earth did they survive this long, being this stupid?
He could only surmise that they thought they’d killed him. That they didn’t see the bullet hit the mirror. That they took the shot and saw Dave fall and were under the impression he went down behind the car.
They were probably celebrating their kill and coming to Dave to relieve him of his weapons.
But they weren’t getting Dave’s weapons. Not on this particular day. Dave would be happy to share some of his ammo with them.
But he was keeping his guns.
He patiently waited until the men were even with the rear of the huge tanker, then scampered across the shoulder and into the woods some thirty yards away.
He held his rifle above his body and slid into the dirt in a move that would have made any big leaguer proud.
And in one fluid movement he spun over, face down and looking toward the highway. He assumed the prone position and aimed his rifle at a point just past the front of the tanker.
He only had seconds to spare. The three came back into view, still separated by several feet and staggered.
Dave almost took his shot, then realized if he waited he could get a two-fer. Once again, he couldn’t believe his luck.
Because the men were staggered, Dave’s target angle was getting sharper and sharper with each step the men took. At some point two of them would line themselves up perfectly. Dave wouldn’t be able to see the second man at all, because the first man would block his view.
Sort of like when one planet passes directly in front of another.
Kind of a moron eclipse, as it were.
The third man would be a solo target because he was too far ahead of the other men to cross either in front of or behind them. Dave would have to take him out with his second shot.
Dave aimed directly at the stomach of the man closest to him and led him. While he slowly moved his sights to keep pace with the man he focused on the fundamentals. Breath control. Trigger control. Relax…
One second went by, then two, then three, as his targets lined up closer and closer together.
The second man disappeared behind the first. Dave didn’t pull the trigger. He slowly squeezed it, as though he were making love to it.
He didn’t hear the shot, but then he seldom did in combat. He felt the recoil. And he saw the first man double over in pain.
He couldn’t see the second man, and that could only mean he’d doubled over too.
But Dave didn’t have time to ponder that. He was too busy lining up on his third target, who was momentarily stunned at the sight of his two friends being hit at the same time. And perhaps puzzled because he’d only heard one shot.
He only hesitated a split second before he finally reacted properly and ran for cover.
But that split second gave Dave the advantage he needed. And the man didn’t run for cover quite fast enough.
It wasn’t a hard shot, really. A man-sized target at forty yards wasn’t that hard when Dave had been shooting rabbits at sixty and eight yards. The bullet struck the man, who turned out to be the short guy with the attitude, inches above the heart and went clean through.
It was a mortal shot, but not instantly. He’d suffer for a few minutes before he died. And his last thoughts would be regret.
Regret that he ever met the stranger. And regret that he’d convinced his two friends to go back after him.
While the little guy was dying, dumb and dumber were rolling about in great pain. Bleeding profusely, and alternating between rages of profanity and begging God to spare them.
Gut shots were a horrible way to die. They were prolonged and painful. Dave had seen one of his friends in Iraq die in such a manner and he knew it was a brutal way to go.
But a gut shot was the only way Dave could reasonably hope to take out two of them with one shot. It was the only way to prevent the bullet from hitting bone and deflecting, or being lodged in a bone and coming to a dead stop.
Had that happened, the first man would have dropped. And there would be two shooters left instead of one.
And they’d still have the advantage.
Dave didn’t regret the tactic. He might in the days ahead. But for now he was just glad he was the last man standing.
Chapter 29
Dave knew the little man was no longer a concern. He was immobilized and his rifle was several yards away from him.
The two men he’d gut shot were a different matter. Both of them were in plain sight, writhing around on the pavement. But each of them was still close enough to their weapons to be a threat.
He approached them slowly, his rifle raised shoulder height. Cautiously, ready to take out either of them at the slightest indication they were going for their weapon.
They saw him about the same time. The pain on their faces turned to terror. One of them froze.
The other, perhaps acting on instinct, reached for the AK-47 a few feet away from him.
He never made it.
His dead hand fell onto the weapon’s stock a split second after Dave fired a bullet into the man’s head.
Two down. One left.
“Please…”
Dave turned his full attention to the last man, who appeared to be begging for his life.
“Please,” he said again.
“I won’t shoot you, as long as you don’t make a move for your gun.”
“I didn’t want to kill you. I told them both to let you go. I said we’ve killed too many already. And that you looked dangerous.”
Dave took a knee before the man, his rifle still aimed at the man’s heart.
“So…” he said. “You didn't want to kill me not because it was wrong. But because you were afraid I might fight back.”
“Yes. None of the others put up a fight.”
“How many guns have you stolen? How many people have you killed?”
I don’t know. Fifteen. Maybe twenty.”
“And what did you do with their guns?”
“We sold them for gold. On the black market. Guns are rare these days. Everybody wants one. But nobody wants to sell.”
“So you thought it would be okay to just take them instead.”
“Yes.”
“Well, at least you’re honest enough to admit it.”
“Mister, I’m dying, aren’t I?”
“Yes. You’ll bleed out, probably within an hour or so. And while you’re waiting you’ll be in excruciating pain.”
“Will you kill me?”
“I already have. You just haven’t finished dying yet.”
The man coughed. His mouth was full of blood, and much of it went spraying onto the pavement.
“I meant would you shoot me again. Put me out of my misery.”
“I know what you meant. And the answer is no.”
“Please.”
“No. This is your one and only chance to ask your God for forgiveness. Your partners missed their chance. You still have yours. I suggest you get on with it before you run out of time.”
“I don’t know this God you’re speaking of. I lost faith in God as a young boy. Thanks to a mother who was always spaced out on drugs and a father who beat me damn near every day. I decided that if there was a God he wouldn’t have put me through that. I’ve always thought God didn’t care, so why should I?”
Dave said, “Believe w
hat you will. Or don’t believe. It doesn’t much matter to me. But don’t try to blame the way you turned out on God. I hear that a lot. How people turn bad because they had crummy parents, or no parents at all. But I’ve known a lot of people in my life who had terrible childhoods too. And they turned out okay. Life is about choices. We decide who we turn out to be. Not our parents. You’ve made some pretty piss-poor choices in your life, both in the kind of man you became and the kind of men you chose as your partners.
“You can’t change any of that now. But you can ask for forgiveness.”
The pool of blood pouring from the man’s midsection was widening on the pavement. It was getting close to Dave’s knee. He stood up.
“And if I were you I’d get on with it. You’re running out of time.”
Dave reached out and frisked the man.
“You don’t have a hand gun?”
He winced, in great pain.
“No. Traded it for three bottles of whiskey.”
He coughed up more blood before going on.
“I choose not to pray. I don’t think there’s a God out there. If there was there wouldn’t be so much pain in this miserable world.”
“Suit yourself.”
There seemed nothing else to say.
Dave picked up the man’s rifle and walked away.
Chapter 30
Dave had a hard time of it that morning. As much as he wanted to get some sleep, he couldn’t do better than dozing off a couple of times. His mind was too busy racing. Trying to understand why some men become murderers and some become doctors. What it was within them that made them make the choices they did.
He wasn’t just blowing smoke to support his point to the dying man. He really had known people who’d gone through hell when they were children. And who turned out to be upstanding citizens. They’d been able to turn their experiences into empathy for others. They’d decided to right the wrongs. To be better parents than their parents had.
They didn’t use their crummy childhood as an excuse to run roughshod over the rest of the world.
Yet some men did. Perhaps they were doomed from the beginning. Perhaps their happenstance wasn’t the result of their upbringing. Perhaps it was a problem with their genetics. Perhaps they just weren’t equipped with the moral fiber needed to rise above the abuse.
Dave’s mind went back to all the men he’d killed. He tried to remember how many there were.
He remembered Mikey, the teenage boy he’d killed in San Antonio. It was a terrible blunder on Dave’s part. He’d shot Mikey in his kitchen, when Mikey turned and Dave saw something shiny in his hand.
The shiny object turned out to be a piece of silverware Mikey was pilfering from a kitchen drawer. Odd now that Dave couldn’t remember whether it was a spoon or a fork. It seemed so long ago.
Dave had shot him because he thought it was a weapon. And Mikey died there, slumped to the floor in a seated position, staring off into space.
That was the first time Dave killed. At least the first time he knew for certain he had. Mikey wound up freezing solid, sitting there in Dave’s kitchen, because Dave was too distraught and stupid to move him outdoors when he had the chance.
Over the long winter they became friends, of sorts. Or at least made peace with one another. Dave carried on long conversations with the dead teenager, sometimes chastising him for breaking into the house and trying to steal from him.
And other times apologizing to Mikey for killing him, and promising him a proper burial when the ground finally thawed.
Dave made good on that promise, although it was a major undertaking. And in the time since he wondered whether he’d gone just a little bit insane on those long days, sitting beside a frozen corpse and carrying on long one-sided conversations with it.
Now he wondered about other things as well. He wondered whether he’d developed a taste for killing.
He could have avoided those three men the first time they’d met. He could have simply darted into the woods instead of dealing with them. They probably would have seen him. Might even have pursued him. But Dave could have evaded them, he was pretty sure.
It was easy to rationalize. To say he met with the men to ask them if they’d seen the red pickup he was looking for.
But there were plenty of other people he could have asked. People who didn’t outnumber him three to one. People without rifles slung over their shoulders. People who didn’t give him a wrench in his gut that said they might be trouble.
He had a second chance to end the encounter without killing anyone.
When the men disappeared behind that tanker and Dave darted into the woods, he could have hidden there. Waited until the men left. Or until nightfall, when he could have climbed back into his Explorer and put a lot of distance between them.
He wondered if he’d gone headlong into what he suspected might be trouble because he actually wanted the conflict.
Perhaps he’d developed a blood lust.
He finally drifted off to sleep in the early afternoon and managed to sleep through the heat even when his t-shirt dried out and he began to sweat.
When he woke up after dark it assumed it was fatigue which had caused him to oversleep.
At least his watch was working again. He’d reset it to 7:20 that morning when the sun came up and the wound it. 7:30 because that’s what time the sun rose the previous day. If it was a couple of minutes off it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
As he woke up another thought entered his head.
Killing came easy for him now. That much had become clear.
But maybe it wasn’t a lust for blood.
Maybe it was an internal need to exact justice in a vicious world where a legal system no longer existed.
Maybe it was a desire to find bad men and do away with them so they’d stop hurting innocent people.
Maybe he was just trying to do his part to help tame a very evil world.
He stood up in the sleeper and stretched.
He wasn’t sure if he was the lone ranger or just somebody who no longer minded killing and would seek out every opportunity to do more.
Maybe a combination of both.
In any event, it was past ten p.m.
He was running late.
In the hours ahead, as he drove west on that lonely interstate highway, dodging dark shadows on the roadway that had once been running Chevys, Fords and Toyotas, he’d have plenty of time to ponder.
In all likelihood this internal debate about killing and morals and justice would go on.
But now he had work to do.
He dressed quickly, then donned the night vision goggles and opened the sleeper’s access door.
The highway appeared clear in both directions.
The last man to die was the only one of the three without a sidearm. Dave had relieved the other two bodies of theirs, and they were both in his backpack.
The men’s’ rifles, an AK-47 and two 30.06s, were positioned within reach of the open door, as was Dave’s rifle. He stepped onto the pavement and reached up for them.
It was a lot to carry. His pack was now heavily laden with handguns and ammo and the rifles filled both hands, even with two slung over his shoulders.
He wouldn’t be able to retrieve his own weapons bag from the scrub brush until he made a trip to the Explorer to deposit most of these.
And that would put him even more behind schedule.
He certainly didn’t need these extra weapons. But maybe he could put them to good use. Put them into the hands of the good people he knew were still out there. People who would use them for the right reasons. Not to take from others, but to hunt for food and to defend their families.
Perhaps he was more lone ranger than bloodthirsty killer after all.
He made his way down the highway to the Explorer and looked around one more time to make sure he was alone.
He was.
He opened the hatchback and deposited everything in it except for his own handgun,
still on his side, and his own rifle.
Then he made his way back to the pickup with the boat trailer, and used that to tell him where to enter the scrub.
He carefully counted his paces, just as before, until he came to the place where he’d deposited his bag of weapons that morning.
It took him several minutes of crawling around in the dirt before he finally found the bag.
It turned out that counting paces wasn’t an exact science, and he’d gone twenty feet farther than he’d gone the first time.
And all the bushes seemed to look alike in the dead of night when viewed through night vision goggles.
By the time he made it back to the Explorer and tossed the bag on board it was almost midnight.
He was way behind schedule and exhausted.
He had a long night ahead of him.
Chapter 31
Sarah had a hard time keeping up with the days. She didn’t feel bad about it, though, because nearly everybody else in the bunker did as well.
Mark posted a work schedule in the bunker’s kitchen which listed each day’s work schedule, projected high and low temperatures, and weather forecast.
When Sarah woke up that morning, she couldn’t remember whether it was Tuesday or Wednesday.
It was kind of important. Because Tuesday she was scheduled to man the tower from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon. Wednesday was her day off.
Sarah didn’t want to get out of bed. But she was the most dependable person she knew in the world. Dave was a close second. She didn’t want to inconvenience anyone by making them come to get her. And she certainly didn’t want to gain a reputation as someone who was not reliable.
So as much as she hated to, she forced her weary butt out of bed and dragged herself to the kitchen to check the calendar.
Mark, as was his habit, had drawn a large black “X” through the Tuesday block first thing that morning, to indicate that Tuesday had come and gone.
Sarah breathed a sigh of relief. Today was Wednesday. Her day off. She’d worked the last of five days in a row and now earned herself a break.
She turned, with the intent of shuffling back to her bunk and sleeping for a couple more hours. Then she saw the coffee pot.
Her Name is Beth: Alone: Book 5 Page 10