Won't Back Down

by J. D. Rhoades

  He just nods, clearly not happy that any of them are there. He sets the rifle against one of the logs that hold up the roof of the front porch and picks a green Coleman propane lantern off the rough plank floor. The lantern comes alive with a sudden hiss of gas and a quick brightness has them all blinking. He hangs the lantern from a hook, picks up the gun again, and gestures with the barrel. “Y’all sit on the edge of the porch.” They look at each other nervously, then comply. There’s a large wooden barrel at the end of the porch with a tin cup hanging by its handle on the edge. The man takes the cup and scoops it into the barrel. It comes out dripping and he drinks deeply, noisily, ending with a smacking of his lips. He looks at the children sitting on the porch, sighs, and scoops out another cupful. “It’s only rainwater,” he says as he hands the cup to Bassim. “Purer than tap. No chemicals in it.”

  “Thank you,” Bassim says, and takes a drink before passing it down.

  “We got plenty,” the man says gruffly. “Barrel’s full. Drink all you want.”

  In silence, the four of them quench their thirst.

  “Daddy,” Meadow begins when they’re done.

  “Hush,” he barks. “I ain’t happy with you, little girl. You know better’n to bring strangers here.”

  “I know, Daddy,” she says, clearly fighting back tears. “But we didn’t have anywhere else to go. There are people after us. Government people.”

  That gets his attention. “Government? What’d you do?”

  “She tried to help us, sir,” Alia speaks up.

  He swings the gun around to point at her. “Did I ask you anything?”

  Bassim stands up. “Hey, stop pointing that at my sister.” The barrel moves slightly to point at him and he flinches, then straightens up and steps deliberately in front of her.

  Zeus, who’s been sitting down scratching his ear with a hind leg, springs up and comes to alert, a low growl rumbling in his throat. Meadow’s father looks startled at first, then smiles cruelly. “You got balls, little man. But if I pull this trigger, that round’ll go through you both.”

  “Daddy, stop it!” Meadow yells, and now she is crying. “They’re my friends. And they need help.”

  Alia’s had enough. “No.” She stands up and gently but firmly moves Bassim aside with a hand on his shoulder. She looks Meadow’s father in the eye. “This is not your problem, sir. My brother and I are sorry to have troubled you. We’ll go. Meadow, Ben, you stay here. I’m sure he will keep his daughter safe from the government.”

  “Alia, no…” Ben says. “Let me…”

  “We are the ones they want,” Alia says. “They don’t care about you.”

  The bearded man looks suspiciously at her, then at Meadow, then back. “What does the government want with the two of you? What did you do?”

  “Nothing,” Alia says. “We’ve done nothing. But they’ve put out a false report that we are terrorists.”

  “Terrorists?” the man scoffs. “You ain’t no older’n sixteen.”

  “Fifteen. But that is what the government says we are.”

  The barrel of the gun lowers slightly. “Fuck the government,” he says. “They say the same thing about me.”

  She smiles sadly. “Maybe we have more in common that we thought. Still. We should leave.”

  He shakes his head. “I say who stays or leaves here.”

  Alia sits back down on the porch. “All right. But we don’t want to be any trouble.”

  Meadow’s father just grunts. He looks over at the dog, whose attention is still riveted on the line of people standing in front of the cabin. “Zeus. Stand down.” The dog relaxes and sits down to resume his scratching.

  “You played him good, sis,” Bassim whispers.

  “Quiet,” she whispers back. “We’re not safe yet.”

  “Daddy,” Meadow says, “is there anything to eat?”

  He looks at her and sighs. “Yeah. Just jerked some venison. And picked some snap beans from the garden.”

  “Good,” she nods. “But first we get to see—”

  “Wait,” her father snaps. “Quiet.” It’s then they all notice that Zeus is back up on his feet, peering off into the dark. “What is it, boy?”

  Without another sound, the dog springs forward and disappears into the night. Meadow’s father snatches up his rifle just as the darker figure of Hera follows her mate straight past them and into the darkness.

  “Meadow,” her father snaps. “Kill that lantern.”

  Without a sound, she reaches up and turns the knob. The hissing dies, followed by the light. They sit in the sudden darkness, eyes and ears straining, the only sound the steady rhythmic zinging of crickets calling back and forth across the forest. Then a sudden agonized scream, clearly from a human being.

  “Get inside,” Meadow’s father says. “Now.”

  ONE HUNDRED-

  TWELVE

  Zeus moves silently though the nighttime forest, all senses sharp and attuned to the threat he can hear and smell approaching. He knows every noise these woods make, the sound and scent of every creature that lives here, and he knows that what’s approaching doesn’t belong.

  He’d been momentarily confused when his master’s offspring, the one who seemed to come in and out of the pack at will, had come up the path; she’d been in the company of those who weren’t of the pack. But she’d shown no signs that she regarded them as a threat, so he’d given them provisional acceptance. Then there’d been the confrontation with his master that set him back on alert. But that had been resolved, with a resulting lessening of the tension and fear scent. Humans are confusing sometimes. There’s nothing confusing, however, about what’s coming toward the pack. The tension, the taste of metal on the air, all scream “threat.” And Zeus, in his way, is comforted. No confusion now. He knows what to do with threats to his pack.

  To his left, he can sense the dark shape of his mate moving through the woods a few feet away. He growls softly at her to warn her off; the pups will want feeding soon, and this is something he can do. She doesn’t respond, but instead melts further into the darkness. Zeus can’t worry about her now. The Others, the not-pack, are only a few feet away. There are three of them. Two smell like human males; the third trails behind, smelling of human female, but he gets a slight scent of Alpha from her. It confuses him again for a moment, especially since she seems to be walking on three legs, but he assesses the most obvious threat: the lead male. He’s moving carefully, swinging his head from side to side, searching. Zeus crouches down, every muscle taut and quivering. He waits for the moment when the human is looking away, then leaps.

  ONE HUNDRED-

  THIRTEEN

  The dark shape seems to come out of nowhere, a nightmare come to life, as it latches itself to Waller’s right bicep and uses that grip to drag him to the ground. His shriek of pain and terror splits the night and silences the forest sounds.

  Tench backpedals away from the thrashing pair on the ground, mouth open in a silent scream of terror. The animal lets go of Waller’s arm, but only for the second or so it takes to lunge for his throat. He manages to throw his side up so that the beast ends up locking its teeth in the meat of his shoulder.

  “Shoot it!” Waller screams. “Shoot the goddamn thing!”

  Tench recovers his presence of mind and depresses the trigger enough to activate the laser sight, the red beam illuminating a pair of flailing bodies, one dark and furry, the other dressed in dark cloth. Rolling around the way they are, Tench hesitates, unable to get a clear shot. Suddenly, the animal yelps and thrashes away, growling and snapping at its own belly. Tench’s light follows, and he sees the glisten of entrails as the dog writhes in its death agony. He moves the red dot of the laser slightly and ends the attack with a bullet through the dog’s head. The animal flops to one side, twitches once, then lies still.

  “Thanks for nothing, pal,” Waller says hoarsely, wiping his bloody knife on his fatigue pants. “Wha
t the hell were you waiting for? That fucking wolf to rip my throat out?”

  “I couldn’t get a shot,” Tench says defensively. “It all happened so fast.”

  “You’re fucking useless.” Waller advances on Tench, the knife held down by his side. Tench raises his weapon.

  “Stop it, you two,” Gray snaps. “We don’t know what’s still out here. We need to get back on track.”

  As if to illustrate her words, a tree trunk splinters a few feet away from Waller’s head, followed by the flat crack of an automatic rifle. The three of them throw themselves on the ground, hugging the earth in the time-honored manner of people under fire.

  A voice comes from the darkness. “This is sovereign territory. You are hereby ordered to get the fuck off my land.”

  ONE HUNDRED-

  FOURTEEN

  Jack Keller sits on a fallen tree beside the path, wondering if he’s on a fool’s errand. These woods are a labyrinth in the dark, a maze without walls waiting to lure an unwary traveler to wander aimlessly or to fall to his death in an unlooked-for ravine. The thing that keeps him going is that the children he’s looking for may be as lost as he is. He’s been proceeding on the assumption that the path he’s been following will eventually lead him to the enclave Meadow’s father has established here in the wilderness. That’s what her map leads him to believe, at least. He takes the map from his back pocket and turns on his flashlight to examine it. As he traces the dotted line that marks the National Park trail, he sees where the borders narrow, with private property on either side. He knows that the land he’s looking for is somewhere beyond those borders. What he doesn’t know is how to find it in the dark. But he also doesn’t know if he can wait for daybreak. The people who threaten the children he’s sworn to protect are also in these woods, and he doesn’t know where to find them, either.

  Suddenly, from a short distance, he hears the sound of screaming, then a single gunshot. He’s on his feet before he realizes he’s up, shotgun at his shoulder, pointed at the sound. Well, that’s one problem solved, he thinks. As the sound of another gunshot echoes through the forest, he recalls the words of a drill sergeant he’d had in boot camp: “If you get your sorry asses lost,” the crusty old bastard had said, “and you will, just quick-march toward the sound of the guns. You can’t go wrong.”

  The advice had been useless the first time he’d gotten lost in battle. But now, after all these years, it’s taken on its own urgency.

  Keller shoulders his weapon and heads for the sound of the guns.

  ONE HUNDRED-

  FIFTEEN

  With the sound of the gunshot and the voice from the darkness, Waller momentarily forgets the pain in his arm and the bleeding holes that are still seeping blood from the attack dog’s teeth. He drops prone, weapon ready and pointed toward the shout. Whoever shot at them must be an amateur, he knows. A professional wouldn’t have given them a warning. Sure enough, as he adjusts his NVGs and looks toward the threat, he sees the blurred glow of a figure walking in their direction. The goggles, at this distance, don’t give him much definition, but he can see the outline of a rifle held out before the softly luminous figure.

  “You got eyes on him?” he hears Tench whisper.

  “Affirmative.” Waller draws a bead on the advancing rifleman. “On three. One. Two. Three.”

  He activates the laser sight and acquires the target. The red dots fix the target like a butterfly on a pair of pins. He feels the trigger break beneath his finger, hears the flat report of the rifle as it fires. He hears Tench’s weapon do the same, and the figure drops with the boneless heaviness of one who’s not getting up again. He manages to get one shot off as he falls, a sharp report that echoes through the night.

  “Target down,” Tench murmurs.

  ONE HUNDRED-

  SIXTEEN

  On the day when John-Robert Troutman had renounced his 14th-Amendment Citizenship, discarded his Social Security number, and renounced the corporate shell created by the birth certificate designating him—in all capital letters—JOHN ROBERT TROUTMAN, he’d become a free and sovereign citizen—with the “citizen” designation being non-capitalized. But even as he felt that heady rush of freedom, he’d known this day would eventually come, the day when he’d have to assert his rights as a man against the false government. He’d even accepted that he might very well have to do it at gunpoint. He’d always thought it would be in a dispute over the hemp he grew under grow-lights in an equipment shed abandoned by the fake National Park Service, or maybe over the indebtedness to the fake IRS and to the banks, those entities that would mortgage his body to foreign governments. He’d cleverly nullified those false debts by signing the pertinent documents in red ink, but he knew that the rigged courts with their fringed Admiralty flags wouldn’t accept that they had no power over a citizen beholden to no law but Anglo/American common law. It surprises him more than a little that the day they finally come for him, the fake government is chasing his daughter and the strange friends of hers he’d never met. But that just makes him feel that his cause is even more righteous. What’s more American than defending one’s land and one’s family against a tyrannical overreaching government?

  He snaps himself out of his reverie. From the sounds he’s heard, whoever’s out there has probably killed Zeus. Or Hera. Maybe both. Whichever it is, his dogs have done their jobs, and done them well. He’ll give them a sendoff appropriate for heroes. But right now, he can’t depend on the killers just giving up and going away. He’s going to have to deal with them himself. For his little girl. For their freedom.

  He moves forward, slowly, listening, waiting for the telltale sounds of movement in the woods he knows so well, waiting for the sign that lets him know where they are.

  That sign comes unexpectedly, in the form of a red dot that appears on his arm and moves quickly to his chest. Before he can react, another red dot appears, next to the first one. He realizes too late what the dots mean. “Oh, shit…” is all he has time to get out before the bullets tear into his chest. His finger jerks on the trigger as he falls. He never hears the shot.

  ONE HUNDRED-

  SEVENTEEN

  “What was that?” Meadow says as she hears the shots out in the darkness. “What’s happening?”

  “Wait here,” Ben says. “I’ll go find out.”

  “Ben, no,” Meadow says. “You don’t know who’s out there. What’s out there. And you’re unarmed.”

  “I’m only unarmed,” Ben snarls, “because your crazy father took my gun.”

  “You don’t have to be.” Alia kneels by her backpack, rummages for a moment, then pulls out a pistol. She holds it out, butt-first, to Ben. “It’s my father’s. Pull back the slide to cock it.”

  “No,” Meadow whispers. She hates the eager look on Ben’s face as he stares at the weapon. “Please, Ben.”

  He looks over at her, then does something she’d never imagined he’d do. He walks over to her and gently kisses her on the forehead. “I need to keep my family safe,” he whispers. He walks over to Alia and holds out his hand. “Thanks.”

  She nods as he takes the gun. “Go with God, Ben.”

  He takes a deep breath and turns away. In a moment, he’s lost in the darkness.

  ONE HUNDRED-

  EIGHTEEN

  Marie smiles as she listens to Francis splashing in the bath, making sonar noises as he dives and surfaces the toy replica of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine she’d found in a junk shop. At five, the boy doesn’t know The Beatles from the College of Cardinals, but she has hopes he’ll learn to love the classics as much as she does.

  The knock on the door makes her frown. She’s not expecting company, and she hasn’t been very happy with the unexpected company she’s had lately. “Frank,” she calls through the half-open bathroom door, “time to wind it up, buddy. It’s bedtime.”

  “Five more minutes, Mom,” he sings out.

  She sighs. Whether it’s gett
ing up in the morning, playing on the computer, or getting out of the bath, “five more minutes” seems to have become his default response to any maternal request. She knows she needs to put her foot down. She knows she’s going to do it soon. Real soon now. But it’s been a long day. “Five minutes,” she concedes, knowing that the next argument will be over whether it’s really been five minutes. But at least it’ll give her time to see who’s at the door.

  She looks through the peephole and frowns at who she sees. A petite, dark-haired woman is standing there, smiling ingratiatingly. “Can I help you?” Marie calls through the door.

  “I hope so,” the woman says. She has the barest trace of an accent, one Marie can’t place. “I’m trying to find Jack Keller. I had heard he might be here.”

  The woman looks harmless enough, but Marie doesn’t like the sound of this at all, given the course of recent events. “Jack’s not here. I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

  The woman looks distressed. “It’s very important that I reach him. It’s,” she looks down, “a personal matter.”

  The quick flare of jealousy Marie feels is immediately replaced by deeper suspicion. “And who are you again?”

  “A friend,” the dark-haired woman says. She smiles, and that smile makes Marie pull back from the peephole and lunge for the table in the entranceway where she’s stashed her father’s gun. But she’s too late. She hears the back door being smashed in, and as she yanks the drawer open, there are two more women in the living room, carrying short-barreled submachine guns. Both of them are dark-haired and dark-eyed like the woman at the door, but one has an ugly scar down one side of her face and the other has a lacing of white scar tissue around her mouth. They have the barrels of the ugly little weapons pointed at Marie’s head before she can draw out her father’s pistol. The one with the scarred mouth walks to the door with quick, determined strides and pulls it open. The woman outside enters, that terrifying smile still on her face and a pistol held down beside one hip. “Good evening, Marie Jones,” she says. “We need to discuss where we might find Jack Keller.”