Judgment Day -03

by Arthur Bradley

  When he turned around, everyone was staring at him, uncertainty in their eyes.

  Brother Lands stood up, an indignant expression on his face.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

  Tanner said nothing as he reached over and slid the gaff from the coat rack.

  “I asked you what you’re doing.” Brother Lands’ voice betrayed the kind of frustration that someone feels when a plan suddenly goes sideways.

  “I could ask you the same thing.”

  The knob on the door behind Tanner rattled as someone tried to enter.

  He sidestepped a few feet in case they decided to try to shoot out the deadbolt or, worse, blindly fire through the meat of the door.

  Seeing that nothing was going according to plan, Larry, Moe, and Curly slowly came together in the center of the room, eyeing Tanner.

  Mistake, he thought. They would have done better to come at him from different angles.

  Without saying a word, Curly rushed forward, bent over and arms outstretched. When he got to within about five feet, Tanner swung the gaff up with both hands, like he was trying to land a six-hundred pound marlin. The pointed metal tip caught the man under his chin, poking through his mouth and up into his sinus cavity before finding its way out through one of his nostrils. The result was absolutely horrific. The man clutched the hook and screamed, struggling with the impossible task of freeing himself.

  Tanner stiff-armed him with the fiberglass handle, never taking his eyes off the other two henchmen. Neither of them took a step forward. After a few agonizing seconds, Curly collapsed to the floor in shock. He lay there unconscious, blood bubbling from his mouth and nose.

  Tanner stepped forward, tilted the gaff, and slid the bloody hook from his mouth. Then he turned to face Brother Lands and the other two men.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said in a calm voice. “That was terrible, right? Maybe the most awful thing you’ve ever seen.”

  They said nothing as they stared at the dark red pool of blood slowly spreading across the wooden floor.

  “See, here’s the thing,” he continued, taking a step toward them. “Your friend got off easy. You three won’t be so lucky.” He swung the gaff to the side, and a long streak of blood spattered against the wall.

  Lands suddenly lunged forward, grabbed a handful of Samantha’s hair, and jerked her to his chest. She screamed and struggled to get away.

  “Drop the weapon, or I’ll kill the girl.”

  Tanner felt his face warming as his heart began doing overtime.

  “You couldn’t even imagine the consequences of that,” he said, staring into the man’s eyes.

  Lands seemed to lose his nerve.

  “Please,” he pleaded, “she’s important. We’ve been waiting for this—for her!”

  “Not gonna happen.” Tanner looked back at Larry and Moe. Both looked like they had stepped in wet cement, afraid to move one way or the other.

  “What are you waiting for?” barked Lands. “Do something!”

  Tanner slid the metal end of the gaff across the wooden floorboards. It made a dry scraping sound.

  “You boys sure you wanna dance with me?”

  The two men looked from Tanner to Lands and then back again, desperately trying to find a way out. Clearly, this wasn’t what they had signed up for.

  A loud bang sounded behind Tanner as someone hit the door with the butt of a rifle. It didn’t budge.

  Tanner took another step forward, and Larry and Moe both took a step back. He pointed to the jail cell.

  “That’s your only chance of ever seeing the light of day again.”

  They looked over at the cell and seemed to genuinely consider the option. Then without warning, Larry changed his mind and lunged forward with a front kick aimed at Tanner’s gut.

  Tanner saw it coming, stepped back a half-step, and hooked the man’s back foot with the gaff. Larry fell flat on his back with a loud umph. Tanner immediately shuffled forward and stomped down on the man’s groin. Larry moaned and curled into a tight ball, clutching his crotch with both hands.

  Stepping around to one side, Tanner put his boot to the back of the man’s head. The blow caught him in the mastoid, and he immediately lost consciousness. Just to make sure it was lights out, Tanner kicked him again, this time squarely on the ear. Larry jerked once and lay still.

  Moe raised both hands and began to back away.

  “Not me, man,” he said.

  Samantha stopped struggling and twisted her head to look up at Brother Lands.

  “You should let me go,” she said. “He’ll kill all of you. Believe me. He will.”

  Lands slowly loosened his painful grip. When she felt his hands come free from her hair, she pulled away and ran to Tanner. Lands looked utterly defeated.

  Tanner pointed to the jail cell.

  “Both of you, inside. Now.”

  Moe and Brother Lands reluctantly walked over to the cell and stepped inside. Tanner swung the door closed. He had no way to lock it, so he slid the sheriff’s desk across the room to brace the jail cell door. Moe eyed the questionable setup.

  “I know,” said Tanner. “If you really want out, you’ll get out. But I’m operating on the honor system here. I’m trusting that you’ll be smart and choose to sit in there rather than face what will be waiting for you out here.”

  Moe looked down at the bunk, unfolded the blanket, and sat down. After a moment, Brother Lands took a seat on the opposite end of the bunk, leaned his head back against the concrete wall, and closed his eyes.

  “They’ll never let her leave,” he said. “The town’s very salvation depends on her.”

  Tanner ignored him and walked to the far side of the room to talk privately with Samantha.

  “What’s he talking about?” she whispered.

  He shrugged. “All I know is that when a nut job wants a young girl, it’s never for anything good.”

  She looked over at Lands and shook her head.

  “I’ll be glad when I’m finally a woman and better able to take care of myself.”

  “Don’t rush it. When you’re a woman, there will be all new dangers. Besides,” he said with a smile, “you’re getting to be pretty scrappy as it is.”

  “Scrappy? Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

  “Always.”

  She shrugged. “Okay, so what do we do now?”

  “We need to get you out of here. You’re the gasoline in all this. If you’re gone, this will die out.”

  They both turned back to study the room, as if expecting to suddenly see a secret hatch or, better yet, a crate full of heavy armament left behind by the National Guard. They saw neither.

  “Ideas?” he asked.

  As if on cue, there was another bang on the door, this time with something heavier than a rifle. Once again, the door held.

  “We’re obviously not going out that way,” she said.

  Tanner pointed to the window.

  “Think you could fit through there?”

  “Not with those bars. Besides, even without the bars, you’d never get your enormous body through that hole.”

  “Enormous body?” Tanner pretended to be hurt. “Was that meant to be a compliment?”

  “Always,” she said, grinning.

  Tanner walked to the window and studied it. The hole measured about fourteen inches square, definitely too small for him to squeeze through. Fortunately, the metal grating wasn’t as big a problem as Samantha had thought. On one side of the grating were hinges and on the other, a small lockable pin that held the apparatus closed. Perhaps it had been installed that way for fire safety, or perhaps it was just cheaper than drilling into the brick and mortar. Either way, it made it much easier to get open from the inside.

  He hurried to the desk and dug through the drawers. At the back of a shallow pencil drawer, he found a small manila envelope. Inside was a silver key that
looked like it might fit a bicycle lock. He snatched it up and raced back to the window. Even before he inserted the key, he knew it would fit. A few seconds later, the grate was swinging open.

  He leaned his head out. No one was at the back of the courthouse. He turned to Samantha and pointed to two broken-down cars in front of a shabby white house across the street.

  “Head for the cars. Then circle around to the back of the house and get out of sight.”

  “But where should I go from there?”

  He lowered his voice. “You remember that burned-out school we passed coming in?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Think you can find it?”

  “It’s only a few blocks away. Of course, I can find it.”

  “All right, then here’s the plan. You sneak out. Get yourself over to that school and wait for me.”

  She looked doubtful. “But how will you get out?”

  He used the gaff to point toward Brother Lands.

  “He’ll be my ticket out of here.”

  “You’re going to use him as a hostage?”

  “A bargaining chip.”

  She looked over at her Savage .22 rifle leaning against the chair.

  “Should I take my rifle?”

  He shook his head. “Without ammunition, it’s only going to slow you down. I’ll bring it with me.”

  After a moment, she pressed her lips together and nodded.

  “Okay, but if you don’t show...” She let the words go unfinished.

  Something bludgeoned the door again. This time it sounded like some kind of makeshift battering ram.

  “Go,” he said. “Now. Before they start catapulting cows.”

  She grabbed a chair and slid it under the window. Then she stepped onto the seat and started to lean out. Something occurred to her, and she ducked back in and gave him a quick hug.

  “Just in case,” she said.

  “In case what?”

  “In case they shoot you to pieces.”

  Without another word, she shimmied out the window and dropped to the ground outside.

  Samantha bolted across a thick carpet of grass and ducked behind the nearest parked car. She pressed her back against the cold sheet metal and surveyed the street. No one was in sight. Apparently what remained of the town was busy congregating either at the church or the front of the courthouse.

  Fortunately, getting back to the school wouldn’t require going by either one. All she needed to do was travel south, following the two-lane road back to where it forked off Highway 656. The total distance was probably only a few hundred yards, but traveling even that far without being seen was going to be tricky. She would need to get off the road first.

  About fifty feet away was a two-story white house with a tall brick chimney that was leaning over so far that it looked like it might tip over at any minute. Beyond the house was a thick line of trees.

  Perfect, she thought. I’ll hide in the trees and follow the road back to the intersection. She took a deep breath and ran for her next position, a thick bush sitting at the front corner of the house. Twenty-three steps later, she skidded in behind it like a baseball player sliding into home plate. A branch stabbed her into the forehead, adding to her growing number of scratches.

  She rose to a crouch and shuffled around to the side of the house. The paint on the old building was dried and flaking off in large white sheets. She hurried on, hopping over the hoses of an air conditioning unit and dodging a rain barrel that smelled like sewage. When she came to the rear corner of the house, she poked her head around to make sure there wasn’t a dog that might give away her position. As soon as she did, she knew she was in trouble.

  Not twenty feet from her, sat a woman in dirty blue jeans and a maroon Virginia Tech Hokies sweatshirt. Before Samantha could duck back around the corner, the woman looked up, and their eyes met.

  Tanner watched as Samantha raced across the street and ducked out of sight behind the large white house.

  “Good girl,” he muttered. “Go for the trees.”

  He waited for two long minutes, staring out the window to make sure that things went as planned. Samantha never came back into view.

  Another thunderous strike shook the sheriff’s door. The center of the door split, and the frame began to pull away from the wall. A few more hits like that one and they would be in.

  “Keep hammering!” he shouted. “If it comes down, bad things are going to happen to Brother Lands.”

  The pounding stopped. After a long moment of silence, a man spoke with a slight Hispanic accent.

  “If you kill him, you son-of-a-bitch, I’ll cut you to pieces myself.”

  “Maybe so. But you’ll be digging two graves. You got my word on that.”

  There was another pause. “What do you want?”

  Tanner smiled. The situation was looking up.

  “Have everyone but you get the hell out of the courthouse. Once that’s done, I’ll come out, and we’ll have us a little talk.”

  “What’s to keep me from shooting you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—love for your fellow man?”

  The man thought for a moment.

  “How about you let me come in and see for myself?” he said in a tentative voice. “Make sure you haven’t already killed him.”

  “I could. But if you come in, there’s a good chance I’ll end up snapping your neck. You sure you want to take that chance?”

  The man hesitated. “Fine. Just you and me, out here in the hall.”

  Tanner heard hushed talking followed by the sound of men moving out of the courthouse. A single set of footsteps came back to the door.

  “We’re alone.”

  “All right,” said Tanner. “Give me a minute.”

  “What for?”

  “Because I’m trying to teach you some patience.”

  The man snarled.

  Tanner walked over and picked up Samantha’s rifle. He adjusted the sling, and hung it muzzle down across his back. Then he walked over to the jail cell and pushed the desk aside.

  Lands and Moe both stood up, unsure of what would happen next.

  Tanner pointed to Lands. “Just you.”

  Moe started to sit back down and then hesitated.

  Tanner stared hard at him.

  “The honor system, remember?”

  He sat.

  Brother Lands stepped out from the cell.

  “We’re not bad men,” he said.

  “Men who do bad things are bad men.”

  Lands started to argue the point, but was interrupted when Tanner grabbed his hair and pulled him around front.

  “Hey,” he said, “what do you think—” He was cut short by the bloody metal gaff being hooked into his open mouth. The sharp tip pressed against the back of his throat, causing him to gag.

  Tanner stood behind him, one hand gripping Lands’ hair, the other choked up on the handle of the gaff.

  “The time for talking is over,” he said, pushing Lands ahead of him. “If you cause me even the slightest grief, I’ll trout you in front of God and everyone.”

  Samantha stood motionless, like a rabbit refusing to accept that it had been seen, even as a hawk swooped in for the kill. Without standing up from the porch swing, Hokies waved for her to come closer. It was a soft beckoning, like she was calling over a neighbor to share a cup of iced tea.

  Samantha turned and looked back over her shoulder toward the side of the house. Going that way wasn’t an option now that she had been seen. If the woman sounded the alarm, she would be running right into the thick of them. She turned around and weighed her chances of getting to the trees. They weren’t that far, a couple of hundred feet maybe.

  “I can make it,” she whispered. “I can.”

  She broke away from the house and ran.

  Hokies was on her feet and giving chase before she had even taken five steps. Samantha had never won a race in her entire
life, not even on track and field day against kids who were a grade behind her. She had always chalked the losses up to being small for her age, but the truth was she never really believed that she could win. Today was different. Today she had no choice.