by Brian Hart
Roy couldn’t tell him. The words wouldn’t form. He shook his head no. He squeezed Wiley’s shoulder and blinked back his tears. Ilah took Sarah’s hand and pulled her close.
“I have my bag,” Ilah said, nodding at her medical kit on the floor between her legs.
“Hurry,” Roy said.
Roy pitched his bike in the back and hopped in after it and the dog followed. Miller accelerated hard. With his back to the cab, Roy’s whole body was shaking and the tears came until he shook them off and straightened up. He pulled the dog to him and took a deep breath, prepared himself to face his kids and whatever happened next.
[43]
R
Ilah checked Karen’s vitals and cleaned the wound. Jerzy and Mace made a makeshift gurney out of an old sheet of plywood and with Roy’s help slid Karen onto it. Miller drove, Ilah sat shotgun, Roy, Jerzy, and the girls rode in the back of the truck with Karen. Mace was staying behind in case anyone came back.
When they got to Miller’s, Roy held the corner of the plywood by Karen’s head, Jerzy held the other. Miller and Wiley had the bottom. Sarah went with Ilah and helped hold the doors open.
The smell of bleach was overpowering. On the count of three they slid the sheet of plywood out from underneath her and oriented her on the largest of the stainless-steel tables. Ilah placed her bag on the counter nearby and spread out the various tools. The cut on Karen’s scalp was black and shaped like a caterpillar.
“Hey,” Roy said to Sarah. “Can you and your sister make your mom some soup so when we’re done she has something to eat?”
“I want to help,” Sarah said.
“You would be helping. That’s why I’m asking.”
“Come on,” Wiley said to her sister, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “She’s going to be OK.”
Once they were gone, Roy put on surgical gloves and took his place next to Ilah. The entrance wound was so small, Ilah could barely open the forceps, and when she did, Karen cried out. She was doped but not unconscious and twice Ilah had to stop what she was doing because Karen was screaming too much. The wound was bleeding again. When it came to it, Roy had to hold Karen down by the shoulders while Miller held her feet, so Ilah could fish out the bullet fragment she’d been bumping against but couldn’t clamp onto. She managed to pull it free and showed the piece of metal to Karen.
“Is that it?” Karen asked. Her face was wet with tears and her lips and eyes were red and swollen-looking against her pale skin.
“It’s all I could find. Do you want me to keep looking?”
“No.” Roy wiped her forehead with a washcloth. He’d been crying too. Miller opened a bottle of saline and passed it to Ilah. By the time she’d emptied the second bottle over the wound Karen had passed out.
All told they had six trucks. Four were standard quad cabs, one was a sixteen-foot box truck, while the last was an ancient ton-and-a-half grain truck towing a lowboy trailer and a Gradall telehandler. Twelve men, no women, all armed, exited the vehicles. They moved quickly through the house and the barn and outbuildings and set up a perimeter.
“Command structure,” Miller said. “Tactical awareness.” Miller and Roy were side by side in a slit trench in the field between the Millers’ and the Binghams’. A spotting scope and binoculars were set up on miniature tripods sheltered behind a blind of wadded dead grass. Miller had dug trenches all over his property with his mini-ex. With the lay of the land, Roy couldn’t see them from his house. Miller claimed he had weapons stashed in the trenches and claymores on pressure switches.
“Watch the road,” Miller said. “We don’t want these guys flanking us and going to my place.”
Roy stayed low in the trench as he reoriented the tripod and focused the binoculars on Miller’s front gate.
“They’re taking your animals,” Miller said. “Chicken chasers. Using your tractor to steal your implements. Goddamn. There goes your tumblebug plow.”
“I don’t care,” Roy said. He didn’t look away from the road and the gate beyond.
“Now it’s the motorcycles.”
“I said I don’t give a shit.” A vehicle, southbound, slowed at the Binghams’ drive. Roy glassed it, side-by-side ATV, four occupants, armed. They continued on, moving toward Miller’s.
“Fuck. They’re headed for your place.”
Miller turned his attention to the road.
“I make it four men, armed,” Miller said.
Moving in the trenches wasn’t easy. Miller led the way, cradling the BA50, stoop-backed and bowlegged. Roy had one of Miller’s pre-ban ARs, extra clips. They’d left the scope but brought the binocs. Miller stopped Roy and pointed to the ground. This trench was an offshoot of the one they’d made their approach in.
“See that piece of yarn?” Miller said. “Don’t step there.”
“OK.” Roy had to bend down and search to find the two-inch piece of dirty red yarn sticking out of the trench wall. It looked like a root, nothing remarkable. They bypassed the claymore and continued toward Miller’s front gate.
Two hundred yards, with the binocs, Roy saw Ilah at the gate talking to the four men. She had a rifle slung on her shoulder. The gate was still closed. Jerzy and Mace were walking quickly toward her.
“Don’t let them in,” Miller said, under his breath. He was prone with the .50.
“If you fire that thing,” Roy said, “all those fuckers at my place will swarm over here.”
“I know that.”
“We can’t shoot them.”
“I know.”
Jerzy had a rifle and Mace had one of his ARs. Ilah hadn’t put her hands on her weapon yet. She was smiling, pointing back at the house.
“She can do this,” Miller said. “She’s smarter than those fucking dimwits.”
He turned to Roy. “Put down those fucking binocs and get your weapon on them. It comes to it, we’ll fight our way in and make a stand.”
Roy moved off a few yards to Miller’s left and settled into position. He couldn’t keep the rifle still. He dropped into the trench and took off his sweatshirt and wadded it up and crammed it under the stock. Jerzy was looking toward them. Mace said something to him and he looked away.
The men at the gate suddenly raised their weapons, pointing them at Ilah, Mace, and Jerzy, and spread out. Ilah raised her hands. Mace and Jerzy did the same.
“Fuck this,” Miller said.
“Wait,” Roy said. “They’re not in yet. They still might leave.”
Ilah stepped sideways to the gate keypad.
“Don’t do it,” Miller said.
She reached out and the gate began to swing open. Two of the militiamen went in and took Ilah’s weapon and pushed her to the ground. Mace and Jerzy laid their weapons down, put their hands behind their head, and began walking toward the gate. Roy couldn’t hear what anyone was saying.
“On three,” Miller said. “I’m going after the two in the back, you hit the two in the front.”
“Where’s Wiley and Sarah? We can’t just start shooting.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
Mace, Jerzy, and Ilah were facedown on the road. Roy had a shot now. He could aim high. The militiamen in the back pulled their vehicle through the gate and got out.
“Other side of the road,” Miller said. “Thirty yards, due south.”
Roy was looking for whatever Miller had seen when the first shot was fired, then three more in succession. The militiaman nearest Mace and Jerzy crumpled to the road. Ilah rolled to her back with a pistol in her hand and shot the man that was standing above her. Ilah sat up to shoot again but the man nearest the ATV fired two shots into her chest and she fell back down. Miller fired and the air went out of Roy’s lungs, the round struck the man that shot Ilah and he spun to the road and didn’t get up. Jerzy got to his feet but Mace pulled him down and they crawled for the ditch. Wiley was in the opposite field, walking forward, weapon raised. The last man had the ATV started, looking back to reverse. The dog was clos
ing the distance to the ATV when Wiley yelled something and fired two warning shots into the back side door of the vehicle, took aim at the driver. The dog came to heel at Wiley. The militiaman held his hands above the wheel.
When he looked over, Miller was gone. Spotted him near the road. He’d left his rifle, had a pistol in his hand. Roy got up, climbed out of the trench and ran toward Wiley. He couldn’t see Mace or Jerzy. Ilah was still down. Wiley was on the road facing down the ATV. “I’m good,” she yelled when she saw Miller. “Go to Ilah.” Miller went to his wife.
Jerzy knelt beside her, held her hand. Miller sat down behind his wife and wrapped his arm around her chest. Mace retrieved his and Jerzy’s weapons and forced the deer rifle into Jerzy’s hand.
“Stand up,” he said to Jerzy. “C’mon.” Jerzy let Ilah’s hand down gently on the road, stood up stiffly, and checked his weapon.
“She’s gone,” Miller said. “She’s fucking gone.” He slid from behind her and cradled her head as he set her down. On his feet, hands shaking. He had his pistol out and he walked by Wiley to the ATV without a word and shot the militiaman in the head. He turned and walked back toward Ilah, Wiley and the dog trailing behind.
Miller knelt over Ilah. He laid his chest on hers. Wiley put her hand on his back. He lifted Ilah’s face to his.
“We have to go,” Roy said. He had Jerzy by the shirt and spun him around. The boy looked as if he might throw up. “Go to the house. Get Karen and Sarah ready to go.”
“Where?” Wiley said. “What about mom?”
“You’ll come with me,” Mace said to Wiley. He’d already loaded the militiamen’s weapons into their ATV. To Jerzy: “There’s no choice now. We’ll take your drill rig, whatever other vehicles we can get on the road.” Mace returned to the ATV and started it and pulled it forward and waved Roy and Jerzy over. “Grab an end.” They slid the nearest body into the back of the four-seat side by side.
“We have to get rid of all this,” Mace said. “They’ll be coming. Be hard to miss that fifty cal.”
“They were running equipment,” Roy said. “We might’ve gotten lucky.”
Miller turned to look at them but didn’t stand up. He had Ilah’s blood on his face and his hands.
They heaped the other three bodies into the back-passenger area of the side-by-side. By the time they’d finished their hands were slick with blood and the yellow jackets were swarming.
“Help me,” Miller said. Roy helped him carry Ilah to the front seat and set her down, loose-boned, gone from this life. Miller held her pistol as he pulled her onto his lap and cradled her body. Roy returned to the field and grabbed Miller’s rifle. Mace drove while Jerzy and Wiley hung off the sides. Back on the road, Roy looked back and there was nobody there. Ilah’s face, her lifeless hand. She couldn’t be but she was.
Karen was sleeping, deep in a darvocet slumber. Sarah was in bed with her, crying. She’d come out and seen Ilah. Wiley squeezed in beside Roy and he put his arm around her. He gestured to Sarah to come with them but she shook her head no. He nodded OK and guided Wiley into Miller’s living room. Western ranch-themed everything, spurs and taxidermy, Remington prints. Mace came in through the mudroom covered in blood, sweating.
“Where’s Miller?” Roy said.
“With his wife.”
“We’re ready.”
Roy kissed Wiley on the top of the head. “See you in a few.”
They drove the ATV with the bodies through the junkyard gate tube-steel archway studded with hubcaps. Eli’s Pick ’n’ Pull, the sign said. No tracks in the dust. The trailer that had served as the yard office was gone. Roy told Mace to keep going toward the back, through the heaps of fuel tanks and plastic farings, five-hundred-gallon totes brimming with shattered safety glass, to where the oil tanks were. It used to be you could bring your oil here to be recycled and Eli, the former proprietor, would resell it to be refined or most likely burned in oil furnaces. The tanks were empty now or close to it.
It took both of them to drag the bodies up the ladder to the catwalk. Roy unhitched the manhole cover and they one after the other sent the bodies slick as fish into the hold where they came to rest in the oily grime remaining in the bottom. When they’d finished, Mace kicked the hatch shut and scraped a handful of dust and ash from the catwalk handrail to wash his hands with.
Jerzy was pulling into the junkyard in Miller’s pickup. Wiley was with him. They used the hand pump from Miller’s truck to drain the fuel from the ATV and left it where it sat.
They were alone on the road but at every turn and hillcrest they expected to meet the militiamen. Roy sat beside Wiley. She leaned on his shoulder and he held on to her.
“Are you OK?”
“She’s dead.”
“It’s not your fault. You did everything you could’ve done.” He turned to her. “We’re going to leave, tonight.”
“Mom can’t.”
He didn’t want to tell her he hadn’t fired his weapon. He would’ve. He’d convinced himself he would’ve. Ilah’s dead but we’re alive. Karen is alive. We’re getting out of here. Poor Miller. Roy didn’t know what to expect when they got back. He hoped he hadn’t killed himself. They needed him. All hands.
Miller was behind his house in the field digging a grave. He had equipment but he was doing it with a shovel. Ilah was wrapped in a bloodstained sheet beside him. Roy went to help but Miller waved him off. The sun was down but it was light enough to see. Roy went to the panel and killed all the breakers so none of Miller’s motion sensor lights would come on. They’d be looking for their friends soon or maybe not, maybe never. Maybe they wouldn’t be missed.
Roy and Jerzy worked late into the night breaking down the drill rig and getting it ready to travel. Mace helped the girls prepare a comfortable place for Karen and themselves in the back of the truck under the camper shell. At some point Miller appeared and, without saying a word to anyone, moved his truck to where he’d been digging. A few minutes later, he drove away.
Roy entered the dark house and made his way to Miller’s spare bedroom.
Karen was sitting up in bed in the dark, glassy eyed and still. Roy sat down beside her, turned off his headlamp, and dug her hand out from under the blanket and held it.
“You need to get some sleep,” Karen said.
“I can’t.” Roy peeled back the blanket and switched on the red LED on his headlamp. Her abdomen was distended and looked black in the red light. The dressing on her wound was clean and dry, but when he touched her forehead, she had a fever.
She pulled the blanket back over herself. “I’ve been thinking. It’s safer if they aren’t seen with us. Nobody knows who they are.”
“They’ve seen Mace.”
“So Mace won’t ride with them. He can take Ilah’s rig. Miller won’t care. I’ll talk to him.”
“He left,” Roy said. “I don’t know where.”
Karen nodded. “Mace was in the back of the truck, I don’t know if they could’ve seen him or not. They saw us. I know they did. They came for us.”
“We can’t let them go on their own,” Roy said, not believing that she was actually thinking this, that it made sense. “We need to stay together.”
“But it’s not safe for us to be with them. Listen, they’ll be going so slowly with the drill rig, we’ll catch up in no time. We’ll hide out for a day or two then go.”
“If your fever doesn’t go down,” Roy said, “we’ll have to go to Reno or go see April. We have to do something. We can’t stay here.”
“I’m not going to Reno. Maybe we should go back home. They’ll leave soon. If they haven’t left already. They won’t go back there, not once they leave, right?”
“After they burn it down,” Roy said. “We’re not going back there. It’s not our home anymore.”
“OK. OK.” She touched Roy’s arm. “I’ll tell the girls. Send them in here, will you? Wiley first.”
She talked to Wiley for half an hour and then had Wiley send in Sa
rah. Sarah came out and ran into her older sister’s arms. Roy didn’t know what to do or say, but within a few hours Jerzy and Mace had finished packing and they were ready to go.
Miller returned, parked his truck out back, and went inside to talk to Karen. A few minutes later he was back outside, chucking supplies into the back of Ilah’s truck. They assumed Miller was coming with them, but no one ever asked him. When the truck was full and everything was tied down, Miller gave Wiley his only functioning TNK handheld and taught her how to use it and told her to keep it charged in the drill rig with the auxiliary batteries. The main unit of the tink took up a section of wall in Miller’s barn the size of a small bookshelf.
“Take all you can carry,” Miller said to Jerzy, standing above the open hatch of his bomb shelter.
“You’re coming with us,” Jerzy said.
“No. Not yet. I’ll leave when Roy and Karen leave.”
“OK,” Jerzy said. “Thanks, man. I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
Before they left, Mace shook Miller’s hand and tried to give Roy a hug but Roy held him at arm’s length.
“Nothing matters to me as much as those girls,” Roy said. “And I’ll tell you, you fucking owe this family. You fucking owe Miller and if anything happens to them or Jerzy—”
“Nobody’s gonna touch them,” Mace said. Mace climbed into Ilah’s truck and started the motor.
Jerzy pulled Roy in for a hug and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “See you in a couple days,” he said.
“We’ll be right behind you,” Roy said. “Let us know about the roadblocks.”
“Will do.”
Before she got in the truck, Roy gave Wiley his pistol and all the ammunition he had, even though Miller had them overloaded with weapons already. Sarah wouldn’t look at him, even when he picked her up to put her in the cab. But once her arms were around him, she wouldn’t let go. He had to peel her off him. Wiley took her and pulled her close.
“Slide over so the dog can get in,” Roy said.
“He’s staying,” Sarah said.