by Eric Walters
I knew Marine snipers. I’d lived on the same base as them, gone to school with their children, been at birthday parties in their houses. They all had some things in common. Even compared to other Marines their hair was a little bit shorter, their uniforms more meticulous. That was what their homes looked like, too. Everything was spotless and in its place. They spoke in precise, clipped tones, with an even voice, as though they were trying to control their heart rate even when they were standing still. They rarely laughed, and I couldn’t imagine them ever crying. They were almost emotionally blank.
My mother had said to me that you had to be that way if you were going to squeeze a trigger, take a life, and not have it register. They could shoot somebody and then take a bite from a sandwich or a sip from their coffee. It was business, and you had to be a certain type to be in that business.
In that moment I wished I was more that type. I wished I could forget what I’d done, or that expression on the man’s face, those dead eyes open and staring into space. It was a look of perpetual surprise, sort of like he was thinking, “My goodness, she killed me!” When I looked at myself in the mirror I could still see a little bit of surprise myself—I’d killed somebody.
I moved the binoculars to look down on the boat’s deck. I couldn’t see anybody. Were they below deck, or just sitting so low against the gunwale that they were out of sight? That would have been smart. Staying out of sight meant staying out of sniper sights. If those uniforms had any impact on them they must have been wondering if we had snipers. But really, shouldn’t I have been able to see somebody? It wasn’t that big a boat, and there weren’t many places to hide.
I looked over to find a second boat. There were so many of them that it wasn’t hard to find. This boat was one of the bigger ones. The top level was covered, closed in, and I couldn’t see through the glass. A few bullets would have shattered those windows, and their confidence, and revealed the captain and the men up there, or even killed somebody.
I scanned the deck. Again, it was empty, but there were more places to hide, and the boat looked big enough to have a compartment below deck.
This all should have been reassuring. Seeing fewer people meant there were fewer people to attack us. Instead it was troubling, disturbing. Why weren’t these two boats just overflowing, brimming with people ready to attack? The boats that had attacked here the first time, the ones that had passed by our little island on their way, were filled with armed men. This made no sense…unless it made perfect sense.
I quickly switched my gaze to a third boat. It was even smaller than the first. The captain was at the stern and there was another man beside him, rifle in hand, but that was it. Just the two of them. On this boat I could see for sure there was nobody else on board.
This was starting to come together in my head. I moved to a fourth boat, deliberately picking another of the smaller ones. I needed confirmation and I quickly got it. I could see the driver on an otherwise empty boat. I was almost positive I knew what was going on, but still, I wanted one more piece of proof. I needed one more piece of proof.
I heard a commotion and turned around. It was my mother, accompanied by Willow. Thank goodness she was here so I could tell her what I thought was happening. Then I saw that they weren’t alone. There were six or seven other people with them. They all had real guns. These were people who had been by the bridge or guarding the channel. She’d pulled them from those posts to come here to guard against an attack…oh, my goodness…that was exactly the wrong thing to do if what I suspected was true!
I jumped to my feet and started to run until I realized there were dozens of eyes on me. Deliberately I slowed to a walk. By the time I got to her she’d already deployed the seven armed people to spots along the wall. That was the worst thing possible, but at least we now could talk. I just had to get rid of one more person.
“Willow, could you go and check on Ethan and your mother?” I asked.
“Shouldn’t I be out here?”
My mother registered that I wanted to talk to her alone. “We don’t need you right now. Just go home for a bit.”
“Sure.” He looked like he was thinking through what I’d asked. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of Ethan. I’ll keep him safe, no matter what. You have my word…both of you have my word.”
“Thanks.”
He took a few steps and I called out to him, and he stopped and turned. “Stay with him, you and your mother, maybe at your house or our house but no place else, okay?”
He nodded and then was gone.
“I know how hard it is for you not to tell him more. He’s a good guy. You know, he reminds me of your father,” my mother said.
“My father?” The man who had left her, the man who’d broken her heart and—?
“I mean that in the best way. So, what’s happened? What’s changed?”
“The boats out there,” I said, gesturing toward the lake, “there’s nobody on them.”
“Nobody?” she questioned.
“Just a captain on each one, and there’s another guy on one of them as well.”
“You checked out all the boats?” she asked.
“I only had time to look at four of them.”
“Then the others could have people, or perhaps you can’t see them below deck,” she said.
“Some of the boats don’t have a below deck.” I pulled the binoculars off my neck and handed them to her. “I looked at boats on the north side of the formation. Look at some to the south,” I suggested.
She took the binoculars and started scanning the lake. She stopped at one boat.
“I can’t see anybody. But then I can’t see everywhere on the boat, so there could be people out of sight,” she said.
“More likely they’re empty because the people who were passengers have been dropped off elsewhere,” I said.
“Elsewhere, where?” she asked.
“I only see two choices. Either they’re below the cliff, hidden from view of our back gate, or they’re on Main Island.”
“Or it could be both,” she agreed.
“So those boats are just out there to make us think this is where the attack is going to happen, right?” I asked.
“That’s the only explanation I can think of.”
“How many people do you think they brought?”
“If there were ten men on each boat—”
“Some of them would carry a lot more than ten,” I said, cutting her off.
“A few could potentially hold forty or fifty people, but if we say ten per boat then that’s a minimum of 210 men, with the potential rising to perhaps double that many,” she said.
“But we only have seventeen people with any sort of gun. We could never stop that many armed invaders,” I gasped.
She shook her head. “We have to slow them down enough to make them think it isn’t worthwhile, to fool them into thinking they can’t win.”
“Will the colonel come with some more men?” I asked.
“If the boats dropped off men on Main Island there’s no guarantee that Sam even got through to ask for help. He might just be hunkered down out there, safe but unable to move.”
“So it’s just us,” I said.
“I don’t think we can count on the cavalry coming. I’m going to pull almost everybody with a rifle off this section. I’ll lead half of them to the back gate and fence. The rest I’m going to send to the bridge and channel. I want you to go ahead and let them know at the channel what we think is happening.” She paused. “Are you okay?”
I knew I didn’t look okay. “No, but I’ll do what I have to do.”
“I know you will. Here, I want you to take this.” She started to undo her holster.
“I have my crossbow,” I said.
“I want you to have this as well. I have the rifle.” She undid her holster and handed the pistol to me.
Reluctantly I put it around my waist and did up the buckle.
“If things go south, you get to Willow’s
house, get them and your brother, bring them to our place, and then we’ll escape into the woods,” she said.
“Not across the channel?”
“Not if that’s where the attack is going to happen. Wait for me and the others at the house as long as you can, but if you have to, just get away into the woods. From there, get the canoes and rowboats to the water. Again, wait as long as you can.”
“We’ll wait until you get there.”
“You have to make sure you and your brother are all right.”
“We’re not going without you.”
“Yes you are. You get away and get to the airport. I need to know that you two are safe. The colonel has given me assurances he’ll care for you. I can count on you, right?”
I nodded.
“People know they are to rally at our house. You get them moving from there. I’ll do whatever I can to meet you, but I have to stay close to the front or our defense will just collapse. You know that.”
I did know it, but I knew something else. “We need you more than they do. If it starts to collapse, we need you to get to us.”
“I’ll move heaven and earth to get there, believe me.” She gave me a big hug.
“Do you think I could be wrong?” I asked quietly.
“No, that’s the problem. I think you’re right.”
She released me, turned, and made her way toward the wall to start reassigning people.
I needed to get on with my job as well. An attack was coming. Where and when were the only questions.
29
I made a quick stop at Willow’s house, just to lay eyes on Ethan and make sure he was all right. Ethan knew something was wrong. We exchanged a few meaningless words and I was off again. As well, Willow was too smart not to realize how bad things were. I made him promise to go to my house with his mother and Ethan and wait for me no matter what happened. He promised.
Cutting along the path through the houses, I couldn’t help but notice how everything seemed so calm, so peaceful, so normal. At the last house before the clearing I hesitated and took a deep breath. This was where normal would end. In my mind I saw the bridge being stormed and armed attackers crossing the channel in little boats—but it was silent and still.
The former baseball field was now rows of tall, ripening tomatoes, interspersed with cucumbers, carrots, and beets. It all looked so beautiful—and of course tempting. We’d understood all along that it was potentially dangerous to grow food where it was so visible to people on the other side of the channel. My mother said it was like “waving a red flag at a bull,” daring them to attack. She was right, but really, there hadn’t been much choice. Every plot of land within the community had to be put under cultivation, and this piece was such a big one that we couldn’t afford to not put it to use. We had to choose between possibly attracting an attack or certain starvation. A definite gain had to win out over a potential risk.
Beyond that I could see the white bridge over the channel. It was one of the two most likely places for an attack and therefore our best defended location. The bridge itself was blocked by a heavy, tall, thick wall, topped by barbed wire. The thickness was made of three layers—wood on two sides with rocks and gravel in the middle as filler. There was a small gate section that could be removed to allow people to pass, but right now it was secured with heavy wooden bars. The whole thing had been designed by Julian, with assistance from people at the airport.
On top of the bridge were four guards with real rifles. Here, behind the barricade, they could shoot but would be protected from even a high-caliber rifle at close range.
All along the channel ran a fence topped with a metal section and barbed wire, with guard stations at twenty-yard intervals. They weren’t much more than the width of a picnic table, which was what they’d been made from. The wood and metal and screws and bolts from four picnic tables had been used to build each station. Again, these were Julian’s designs. In his unique way he’d made them not only functional but rather attractive as he’d modeled them after the medieval castle designs Willow’s father had shown him.
Each guard station was occupied by two people. While both were in Marine uniforms, only one of them had a real rifle, and the other held a fake. It was reassuring to see that those people who had been pulled had already been sent back to their original posts by my mother. I was reassured, and surprised, to see her up on the bridge. I’d thought she was going to the back gate—or was she only sending people there? Either way, her being here made me feel better.
“Good morning, Emma.”
The voice startled me. One of the women—her name was Grace—was on her knees between the rows of tomatoes. There was a basket at her feet filled with carrots and radishes.
“Do you think you should be out here?” I asked.
“People still have to eat.”
“I know they have to eat, but it might be better if—”
My words were cut off by a “whoosh.” A trail of white smoke raced above our heads, followed by a gigantic explosion right behind us! I spun around in time to see the wood of a house shoot up into the air and then rain down to the ground! It had been completely destroyed!
Stunned, I was shocked back to reality by a second “whoosh” that passed over my head. I watched as something hit the ground, and dirt and rocks shot high into the air and showered back down to the ground.
“What’s happening?” Grace screamed.
“Those were RPGs,” I gasped.
“What?”
Before I could explain the air was filled with the sound of gunfire! I dropped to the ground as Grace jumped to her feet and started running across the open area leading toward the houses.
“Get down!” I screamed. “Get down!”
She dropped down, her basket flying into the air and then landing in front of her, the vegetables spilling out all over the ground. There was just something about the way she landed, the way she’d thudded to the ground. She wasn’t moving. The force of the fall must have knocked the air out of her lungs. Then I saw a dark patch emerging on her cream-colored top. She hadn’t fallen. She’d been shot. That was blood. She needed help, but what help could I give? She was out in the open and not moving. Was she already dead? The gunfire continued.
I flattened myself closer to the ground, taking shelter behind the mounds of dirt, hidden by the tall tomato stalks. Shots rang out. Some sounded closer. That was our people firing back. On all fours I crawled along, still protected, until I got to a spot where I could see across the channel.
On the far side were people, and they were firing their weapons at us. On the channel itself little rowboats and canoes had been put into the water and people were rowing and paddling over. I saw one of them get hit and tumble backwards out of the boat and into the channel. He’d been shot. We’d got him!
The first little boat came across and the three men aboard climbed the fence, trying to scramble over the barbed wire strands at the top. One of them spun around, his body absorbing a bullet as he toppled over. Then the second was hit, crumbling into the wire, his arm and foot locked in so he couldn’t fall and just hung there suspended. The third man retreated and slid down the bank so that he was under cover of the slope.
More of the boats had made it across the channel, discharging more men. They were now massing on the bank, taking cover in the slope of the incline, throwing more fire at the guard stations. Our guards were huddled down, taking cover, bullets coming at them almost stopping them from being able to return fire at all. They needed to fire. Wait, I had a gun!
I pulled my mother’s pistol out of the holster and aimed it toward the bank. I instantly realized that I couldn’t hit anything from this distance.
My eye was caught by movement off to one side. There was a mass of people—thirty or forty or more—and they were running along the path on Main Island, firing their weapons and charging toward the bridge!
Up on the bridge rifles were being fired. My mother was up there. And as the men rus
hed forward along the path some were falling, wounded or killed, but that didn’t stop others from continuing to move toward the bridge. The first of them made the base of the bridge and took cover behind the pillars as well as using the curve of the bridge itself for protection. They were inching forward, moving from pillar to pillar, trying to reach the top. Some were cut down but they kept coming. How long could my mother and the others hold them off? How long before they got to the top and then over the wall and—?
Three of our guards ran off the bridge, streaking toward the crops and the houses! They were running away! Where was the fourth man…and where was my mother? If five couldn’t hold the bridge what chance did two have? She needed help.
I got up, still staying below the level of the tomato plants, using them for cover, and ran in the direction of the bridge. The three men were running toward me, toward the cover that I was trying to leave. We met at the edge—Garth was one of them.
“You can’t go!” I yelled. “My mother needs you!”
“She’s the one who ordered us to leave!” Garth yelled back.
Before I could think to ask anything else they all dropped to the ground and started firing back toward the bridge. What were they doing—? Wait, they were laying down cover fire.
At that instant two more figures ran from the bridge. One of them was my mother. They were running, zigzagging back and forth, dodging bullets as they ran. Garth and the others were firing at the men on the bridge. Some of them were already at the top and a few were starting to climb over the barricade. We had to fall back. They’d all be over in a minute and we didn’t have the firepower to—and then the bridge exploded!
The ground shook as a cloud of black smoke shot up into the air and pieces of grit and rocks—little chunks of concrete—rained down around us! I looked up and saw that where the bridge was—where all those men had been standing—was nothing more than smoke. It was gone except for a few jagged, unconnected chunks of concrete. The bridge was gone and all of those men were gone with it. How many had there been—twenty or thirty?—all of them were dead. No, more than dead. They had been blown apart, body parts and disintegration was all that was left.