by John Grit
* * *
“It’s time for another injection.” Nate hated waking Brian, but there was no choice. He shook him until he stirred.
Brian opened his eyes slightly. They were slits and unfocused as he looked at his father in the dim glow of the lamp, its wick turned down to reduce the light it produced. Then they opened wide, alarm on his face. He started to rise as if he were going to jump out of bed.
“Hold on! Just lie back. Everything is okay. I have to give you another shot.”
Brian relaxed, settling back and pulling his blanket up to his chin. “It’s cold.”
“Yep. And so is your leg.” Nate grabbed the sleeping bag nearby and spread it over Brian, but leaving his lower leg uncovered. “At least it’s not as hot as it was four hours ago. That’s all the difference I can see so far, but it’s way too soon to expect much. It’s a good sign though.”
“Have they been sneaking around?” Brian asked.
“Can’t see with the shutters closed. No way to know how serious Chuck Shingle and his gang are about killing us and taking the farm. They may have left, or they may be out there now planning and waiting.”
“You know one of the bastards?”
Nate suddenly looked weary. “Had a run-in with him when I was in high school. He spent some time in jail over it. That was nothing new for him, nor was it his last. He finally got sentenced to life for murder. They should have allowed the human race to take a dump by executing him. But that’s past history. He evidently talked his bunch into coming here when they escaped from state prison. He hates me—and your mother.”
“Mom? The piece of shit!”
“Evidently they haven’t bothered to case the place and find the graves, so they don’t know she’s gone.”
“So they don’t know how many guns are waiting for them.”
“Yes,” Nate said. “There are a few things in our favor: They don’t know you’re bedridden, Susan is gone, or how many are in here. They also do not know yet I killed the other three. It’s likely they’re heading upriver to join up with them before they try anything again. The real game changer is the girl out there. Someone in the woods who can shoot makes them nervous. It’s too risky for them to just come back and try their stunt again until they know more about what they have taken on. Chuck’s little maggots are giving him grief about making us look easy, I can assure you of that. He’s probably got a mutiny on his hands.”
“And some deserters.”
“Yep. Two are wounded. And—”
“Maybe three,” Brian said. “I’m sure I got one with that last shot. Might be dead.”
“The one you crippled is worthless, maybe dead. In fact most likely. You say she hit him too. Both he and the other she hit multiple times are either dead or worthless.”
“She hit them both all right, I heard it.”
“Well,” Nate said, “those little bullets were nearly spent, but they went deep enough to reach organs and major blood vessels. Depends on where she hit them. Anyway, they’re going to die, or already have.”
“Good.”
“Good for us. Dead convicts can’t hurt us.”
“Even so, they wanted to hurt my mother. They can go to hell.”
“They will…if the preachers know what they’re talking about. You should cool off though. We need to keep level heads on our shoulders to get through this.”
Nate cleaned Brian’s leg with alcohol and gave him an injection.
Brian showed no reaction when Nate pushed the needle in. “That girl is in danger. You know it. They might be hunting her now. We can’t just stay here and let them kill her. I can walk.”
Nate tried to search his son’s soul. His little boy was dying, and a man was taking his place. He did not know how to feel about it. He did know it was too soon. “I can’t see them doing what I couldn’t do.”
“What?” Brian seemed confused.
“They will never lay eyes on her. If they hunt her, they’re pissing in the wind. I was more surprised when I learned she was a girl, and so young, than you were. She’s that good. Of course I didn’t know she wasn’t armed when I hunted her. I could have taken more chances and maybe at least gotten a look at her. Now she is armed, and they know it. They’re stupid, but they know she can shoot, and they have proof how dangerous she can be. No, they are not in a hurry to tangle with her or us tonight.”
“They don’t know she’s just some girl we don’t know either; probably think she’s part of the family, maybe you or your son.”
“True,” Nate said. “They are more in the dark about what they’re up against than we are. That’s good. Makes them nervous.”
“Think they might give up and leave?”
“Possible some will. Chuckey’s not going to live over this though, no matter what happens he’s a dead SOB. His feud with me and my family ends soon. If he runs, I will hunt him down.”
“Now you’re the one who should cool off.”
“Oh, the only thing about what I have planned for him that’s hot is the lead; the rest will be served cold.”
“Revenge.”
“I’ve had enough of Chuckey, Brian. You and I have plenty of other things to worry about without him in this world.” He stood. “Get some sleep. I will need you to stay awake tomorrow while I rest. It will be a few more hours before they come. If they come tonight.”
* * *
It was just one shot. Wood splinters landed on Brian and the sleeping bag. Nate ran into the room and kept Brian down. “Just stay where you are. They can’t shoot through the block walls with the rock facing. Stay down, below the window.”
“Give me the shotgun,” Brian yelled. “They’ll come through the windows.”
The night returned to silence.
Nate put his finger to his lips. He listened.
Nothing.
Brian gripped the shotgun, barrel slanting up towards the broken glass and closed shutters. Thirty minutes later another shot came through a window on the other side of the house.
Nate bent down to Brian’s ear. “They’re harassing us so we can’t get any sleep tonight. Just try to rest. I’m here. This is my watch. Yours will start at sunrise.”
Thirty more minutes of silence ended with another shot. It was followed in less than two seconds by the pop of a .22, which in turn, was followed by a scream.
A man yelled, “Oh, fuck!” The girl had found him by his muzzle flash.
Nate ran to the other end of the house. “Hurt did it? If you don’t want more, you need to pack up and cut your losses before they grow.”
“You’re dead. You son of a bitch!”
Nate knew the voice.
“No Chuckey, I’m feeling just fine. Many of your bunch aren’t doing so well though.” Chuck Shingle hated being called Chuckey and Nate knew it. “Don’t bother looking for the three upriver; they died yesterday…after telling us your plans. We were waiting for you.”
“Chuck!” A voice came from out of the dark woods. “You son of a bitch! Look what you’ve talked us into. Of all the farms we could have taken.” It was the man who had just felt the sting of the girl’s rifle. “You can have this shit. I’m gone. I’ve already lost a finger, that’s enough.”
Shingle’s voice reverberated with rage. “I’m telling you, you gutless bastard, there’s enough food here to live well for a year.”
A barrage of shots came through the back door.
Nate dropped to his belly, rifle in hand.
“Dad!”
Nate yelled down the hall, “Stay where you are and keep quiet.”
The barrage ceased.
“You’re going to run out of ammo, Chuckey,” Nate yelled. “We’ve got thousands of rounds, how about you?”
“Yeah,” Shingle yelled back, “that’s why the sniper is using a .22.”
“My neighbor just happened to be hunting squirrels when you started this party. Good shot though, isn’t he? I met him in Ranger School.”
Silence.
> “Chuckey, as is your habit, you didn’t think this through. The house is rock-covered block with a metal roof. The only thing you can do is burn the barn, and what good will that do you? We have plenty of water and food. Play the waiting game and you lose, asshole.”
Silence.
“The three we killed had little food and I doubt you do either. You’re going to get hungry trying to wait us out, Chuckey.”
Another barrage of shots came through the door.
Nate tried to determine the angle the shots were coming from, got on his knees and fired in a horizontal spray, spaced to cover a sector that left no man-sized holes in it. He dropped to the floor and rolled across the room.
Silence again.
Nate slipped a fresh twenty round magazine in the M14.
“Chuckey, you still there?”
Silence.
Nate laughed as loud and strong as he could. He did not feel like laughing, but he hoped it would burn Chuck Shingle’s ears. Shingle had a temper, and the surest way to make him mad was to hurt his ego.
“Hey, Chuckey, you know what the coach always said: You can take the white trash boy out of White Trash Hollow, but you can’t take the white trash out of the boy. Everyone knew he was talking about you.”
When there was no gunfire or verbal assault, Nate knew Shingle was either dead or no longer within hearing. Shingle did not have much self-control, just one reason he had spent so much time behind bars.
Perhaps Nate hit him or at least came close enough to scare him into backing off for a while. He hoped he was lying out there dead. But there was no way to be sure until daylight.
After an hour, Nate rushed past the back door and went down the hall, keeping low for safety. Entering Brian’s room, he found him awake, the shotgun in his hands, pointed loosely at the shuttered window.
“You need to sleep,” Nate said. “This is still my watch.”
Brian gave him a look that said it all. “You’re joking. Sleep? They’re shooting at us.”
“Not now.”
Brian rubbed his leg. “They were, and will again anytime.”
“You’re going to wish you had slept while you had the chance. Morning will be your watch from sunrise till ten.”
“You’re going to need more sleep than that, Dad.”
“I’ll be fine as long as I get a few hours. In Ranger school we went months on an average of one hour of rest out of twenty-four.”
“Bull!”
“We were on our feet twenty out of twenty-four and went without food on some days. Some guys hallucinate from physical exhaustion and lack of sleep. If they can’t get a grip, they wash out. We did get a night’s sleep before we HALOed—high altitude, low opening— into Eglin for the swamp segment of the course.”
Brian looked at his father with tired eyes. “Why did they let you sleep that one time before you jumped?”
“Too dangerous to HALO jump while that tired. How likely is it for soldiers to have to jump after months of combat with no rest in the real world? When soldiers jump into combat, they’re usually fresh; it’s the beginning of their involvement in a battle.”
“I didn’t know. You never told me. Never said anything about how you got wounded either.”
Nate shrugged his shoulders. “Boring stuff. What we’ve been through lately overshadows my short Army career. It would put you to sleep.”
“I need something to put me to sleep.”
“How about I make us a sandwich?” Nate stood and then stepped aside so he could not be shot through the shutters. “Neither of us ate anything in many hours.”
“Okay, but they may be going after the girl or up to something else.”
“They may be doing a lot of things.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said, smart aleck.” Brian smiled.
“They may be trying to hot-wire the truck or tractor. They’re wasting time. I disabled them a few days back by removing a few parts.”
“Oh.”
“They may be looking for gas or diesel in the barn, they won’t find any. I hid what little we had by burying it in the chicken feed bin. They may be trying to siphon some out of the truck and tractor to burn us out with, the tanks are empty.”
“You drained them.” Brian had a smirk on his face.
“Yep.”
“Like I said you’re a smart aleck.” Brian’s smirk was still there.
Nate looked at his watch. “It’s early, but I might as well give you a shot now during this lull in the action.”
The smile on Brian’s face vanished.
Chapter 10
The sun was up, and Brian was asleep. Nate could not bring himself to wake him. Let him sleep. His leg’s getting better now. Thank God and Mel’s drugs.
Every inch of Nate’s body screamed for rest. I’m damn sure not as young as I was in my Army days, but I have one more long battle left in me. He referred to raising Brian, not just the current troubles. I better, a father’s contract with his children is never voided.
Nate looked through bullet holes in a living room window shutter. Fog hung low, just above the warmer earth. A dip in the pasture held a cloud of fog denser than the rest, like a bowl of whipped cream. Mist drifted up from the river that was too low in the valley to see from the house. The fog there was so thick he could see only a hint of the trees behind. The world was new again, reborn and one hour old, still wet behind the ears, as Nate’s father used to say of the morning dew.
Somewhere in that fog, and the woods it shrouded, predators waited for him or Brian or the girl to make a fatal mistake. After he got some rest, he would go out there and hunt them down.
A cowling on the tractor was pulled aside. Nate knew they had been at the pickup too. Chuck Shingle must have convinced them to stay and fight. No, the convicts had not given up and gone looking for easier prey. They were out there. They wanted his life and Brian’s and the girl’s.
“No. Hell no.”
Nate gripped his rifle; it weighed a ton to his weary arms. Hate’s talons tightened around his heart, leaving his chest tight. Last night was your hunt; tonight is mine.
If not for the danger to the girl, he could set traps. He knew a dozen ways to maim, even kill a man with booby traps. He was also worried about her out there while he hunted them in the dark. It was one reason he stayed in the house. That and Brian needing injections. He could shoot her or her him. Fratricide takes its toll in every war. When seconds mean life or death, mistakes will be made. Pull the trigger too late, you’re dead, too soon, and you may kill a friend. The fog now beginning to lift will return with nightfall and with it the fog of war.
* * *
Brian listened for any sound that would warn him of danger. It was all he could do since all the windows were shuttered and he could not see out. Even the shutter the man hacked up with an ax was replaced by his father. Nate turned the steel plate on end so it would be tall enough, placing it against the window and then pushing a dresser up against it. His father warned him not to look out through the holes in the shutters and to stay away from the windows altogether. “Stay low and away from the windows and doors,” Nate said. “Just listen. Hear anything outside, wake me.”
But he was standing on his good leg and not staying low like his father told him. He felt the need to walk a little, get some blood flowing in his legs.
His father was asleep, not in bed, but on the living room floor. He said he could get into action quicker, and it was safer. He laid there with his rifle across his chest, still in his boots, his load-bearing harness beside him. Brian was not fully convinced he told him the total truth. Did he feel safer sleeping on the ground because that is where he had slept when he was fighting for the country?
A midday sun beat down strong, but Brian shivered in the cold, keeping a blanket wrapped around him. His leg too, was cold. His father told him that meant the infection was fading. He hoped so. He thought he felt better than yesterday. It was difficult to say for sure though. He was just too tired to
tell.
Thwack!
Splinters from a living room window shutter flew across the room, and a bullet lodged in the back of a couch, stuffing exploded in the air like smoke.
“Hit the floor!” Nate’s words were unnecessary. Brian was already dropping to his knees, grimacing from the pain of his wound. Then he rolled on his side next to the front wall.
They lay there on the living room hardwood floor, looking at each other. For some reason Brian started laughing. He found the scene hilarious.
Nate’s face showed puzzlement for a second. Then he too, started to laugh. “You crazy kid. Is this really funny?”
“I guess not. For some reason it seems funny.”
Another round came in through the same window, this one putting a hole in the floor just behind Nate. He grabbed his harness with extra magazines and fast-crawled over to the wall not far from Brian. “He must be shooting from a tree. It’s the only way the bullets could be coming at that angle.”
“The bastard almost got you,” Brain said. “I wish Grandpa had put steel shutters in.”
“He was thinking of hurricanes, not bullets.”
“I didn’t mean to laugh at you nearly getting shot.”
Nate’s eyes flashed to his son. “You laughed before that.”
“I don’t know why I thought it was funny. Us lying on the floor I guess.”
“You’re giddy from lack of sleep. We both are. Stay here. I’m getting the bolt-action and binocs. If he’s in a tree, I’ll find him and take him out.”
“He’s just shooting blind like last night.”
“Yeah,” Nate said, “but they’re trying to get the bullets to hit lower where they know we’ll be.”
“If he’s in a tree on the other side of the field, it must be a tall one.”
Another bullet crashed in, this one through the kitchen window.
Nate looked around the room. “Get over there in the corner. Someone might shoot through the back door.”