Bobby Sky

by Joe Shine

  We chugged a few glasses of water each—it actually tasted delicious—before going into the living room. Like everything else about this house, the living room was small but perfect. Two rocking chairs sat in front of a roaring fire and there was a large brown leather couch behind them. I think the fire reminded us all we were soaking wet and freezing, so we all rushed to crowd around it. The warmth felt awesome.

  A few minutes later, Frank appeared with some boxes of clothes.

  “Some of our son’s old stuff. You’re welcome to it,” he offered. He tossed me a sweat suit and added, “Probably the only thing we have that’ll come close to fitting you, hoss.”

  While the others dug through the old clothes I stripped down and put on the sweats. The pants fit more like capris and the top barely reached my forearms. Still, the warm clothes felt amazing. The others found clothes that fit them well enough. Seamus was a bit snug in his T-shirt and jeans, but Karim, Ryo, and Amit, all pretty skinny, were swimming in their flannel shirts and jeans.

  “I feel like a cowboy,” Ryo said, looking down. “This is what you wore every day, right, Bobby?” he asked me jokingly.

  Amit quickly added, “So this is what being Bobby Sky feels like.” Then doing his best impression of me, “ Hi, I’m Bobby. I’m a tough cowboy. Don’t mess with Texan.”

  Everyone laughed.

  “I don’t sound like that!” I laughed. “And it’s ‘Don’t mess with Texas.’”

  “Frank, you left the barn doors open!” Charlotte called from the kitchen.

  “I left them open for the animals,” he called back.

  “Don’t lie. You just forgot.”

  Frank had barely sat down in his rocking chair and grumbled at being called out.

  “I’ll do it,” I offered.

  “Appreciate the offer, son, but have you met my wife?” he joked. “Back in a few,” he added as he got up and walked out.

  The others went back to warming up by the fire. I went to the kitchen.

  “Thanks for having us, ma’am,” I told Charlotte. “Can I help you with anything?”

  “No, I’m fine. Thank you, though.” Then she paused. “Actually, can you get all your wet clothes for me?”

  “Sure, why?”

  “So I can toss them in the wash.”

  “Oh, I can do that. Where’s the wash?” I asked, even though I fully remembered it being down in the basement.

  “Cellar. Thanks.”

  “And really, thank you.”

  It felt strangely nice to do an honest-to-goodness chore again, even if it was only a load of laundry. I was still down in the basement tossing in the detergent when Frank came down the tunnel. He was soaked to the bone.

  “Wanna toss in your clothes?” I asked him.

  “Nah,” he said, waving me off. “Appreciate it, though.”

  “Get everything closed up?”

  “Yep, all good.”

  He took a deep pull of air and smiled. “Mmmm. Stew’s ready.”

  We couldn’t all fit in their small dining nook, so we took our stew into the living room. We were all starving and still a bit cold, so you could chalk it up to that, but I’m not going to lie. This was one of the best meals I’d ever had.

  Chapter 20

  Solicitors Not Welcome

  Car tires splashing through puddles in wet, muddy gravel.

  I was dreaming, right? Or was I in that gray area in between? The wind had died down and the rain was only a patter now, but the lightning was still flashing, and the thunder was still booming. It was so relaxing . . . so nice . . . (yawn) . . . Sleep, here I am. Let’s get back to this.

  Car doors quietly clicking open.

  Okay, that I heard. For real. What time was it? I checked my phone, because that’s what you do, and the stupid thing was still broken. Why was I still even carrying it around? It was unfixable after the EMP and I knew this. The tick-tock of the clock on the wall to my right called to me. 1:15 a.m. Yikes, that was really early. Or really late, depending on your night, I guess.

  I’d volunteered to take the couch in the living room. They thought I’d done it out of politeness since there were only four guest beds, but really it was so I had quick access to both entry points of the house. I tiptoed to the window by the front door and looked out. It was pitch black out there. I waited. A crack of lightning hit. For half a second the burst of light showed me a parked SUV a hundred feet away and four figures in black creeping toward the house. Armed. Silhouettes with machine guns. Another burst of light from above. The men were silently spreading out in a line across the front of the house.

  Questions? Oh, you bet I had them, but this was not the time. There would be time for questions later.

  Ryo.

  I sprinted to the room he was sharing with Amit and had barely shoved open the door when the first explosion of gunfire came ripping through the walls. One snagged me in the shoulder and knocked me down. I knew right away it wasn’t too bad—just some tissue damage, a lot of blood, but no broken bones. Not that it hurt, of course. The fire shots I’d endured at FATE had numbed my pain receptors for life long ago, but I was annoyed that the shot had knocked me down. Probably saved my life, though. Another round of fire sliced through the air above my head. Ryo was lucky. The heavy wooden headboard was a shield. Bullets were tearing through the wall like it was made of paper, but the bed was like an armored vehicle and took the fire like a champ. Nothing was getting through it.

  Amit popped up in his bed—mouth open, eyes wide. The next second, bullets tore his chest open. He fell to the floor next to me—dead. I’m not gonna lie. My first thought was better him than Ryo, who was staring in horror at me, frozen, and still under the covers. There was yelling and screaming from the room across the hall where Seamus and Karim had bunked. And I could also hear Frank and Charlotte yelling and moving around in their room upstairs.

  More gunfire.

  “Stay down!” I yelled.

  I could tell that the attackers were moving counterclockwise around the house. The movement was methodical and timed. I knew this pattern. Heck, I’d practiced the same tactic myself. You do a clean, sweeping circle around the house, killing, injuring, or flat out scaring anything inside. Once you’ve finished the loop, you go in and mop up. The bad news was this meant the guys were well trained. The glimmer of good news was their decision to go counterclockwise meant they were moving away from us.

  Time would run out fast, though. Ryo was safe here, at least for the moment, so my only option was to stop the shooters before their sweep brought them back around to this room again.

  “I’m gonna go check on the others and get help, okay?” I yelled at him. “Stay here and stay down! Don’t move! Swear it.”

  He nodded. I’d have preferred an actual “I swear,” out loud. But it was time to move.

  Staying low, I ran to the cellar door and grabbed Charlotte’s double barrel shotgun. It was loaded but with only one shell. I didn’t have time to look for more. The gunmen were in the backyard now, halfway done. As I passed back through the kitchen, I grabbed a knife from the cutting boards.

  Forcing myself not to dash straight back to Ryo, I sprinted out the bullet-riddled front door instead, which was barely hanging on by a lone hinge. Rain pelted me. My bare feet sloshed in the mud, but gunfire drowned out any sound, and I knew that the storm and the darkness gave me natural cover. I reached Ryo’s side of the house at the same time the first of the attackers was rounding the corner from the back. I hurled the knife at him and it struck him right in the throat. He fell to his knees. I yanked the knife free as he collapsed to the ground and plunged it into the heart of the next shooter in line. Bad move. The knife got stuck in bone. The dead man fell backward, taking my knife with him. I had no choice but to unload the shotgun on shooter number three. The blast caught him square in the chest, picked him up, and
hurled him backward into the final attacker. They crashed to the ground in a heap. Perfect. Before he could scramble free, I flipped the gun in my hand and swung it like a bat at his head. The butt connected with his skull with a sharp crack. His body slumped back into the mud. He was out cold, but he’d live. When he woke up, I’d finally get some answers. Tossing the shotgun aside, I grabbed his assault rifle and stood over the bodies.

  Adrenaline like I’d never felt before coursed through me. That . . . was . . . awesome! I’d performed in front of two hundred thousand fans in Shanghai. We’d given a private concert to the Pope. I got to drive an actual F1 supercar 240 miles per hour for our “Rush of Love” video. None of it—nothing compared to this. I wanted more.

  My ears perked up at a faint rumble. Engines. I turned toward the road. The headlights of two cars were bouncing down unevenly toward me, their beams dancing in the rain. Oh, world, sometimes you’re just the best. I raised my new and improved weapon. It was an SR-3 Vikhr. I almost felt giddy. I loved these things. Compact, extremely deadly, and very fast. I pulled the trigger and sent a stream of my bullets into the beams. The cars went swerving off the road. When the clip clicked empty, I dropped the gun and picked up another dead guy’s. Rinse and repeat.

  The headlights winked off.

  I stopped firing and squinted. A bullet whizzed so close to my head that I felt the heat of it. It was followed by a hailstorm of others. I dove to the ground and started to bear crawl–sprint back to the house. I took the risk and grabbed a SIG SAUER pistol off the body of the first attacker. It wasn’t much, but it would give me a better chance than not having anything. Judging from the gunfire I knew there were at least five unique shooters out there. The SIG clip held ten rounds, so I had two for each of them. Come meet me inside, fellas.

  I ran straight to Ryo’s room and pushed the door open. He’d broken his promise and was on the floor. I instantly understood. He was sitting next to Amit and I could tell from the blood on his hands and clothes he’d tried to do CPR on the kid. Ryo looked up at me, and when our eyes met, his eyes filled with tears. I wanted to hug him. That, and punch him in the face for breaking his promise. Trying to save Amit was a very Ryo thing to do, but a better use of Amit’s body would have been as a shield. I kept that to myself.

  “Come on!” I grabbed him and forced him to his feet.

  “We can’t leave him!” Ryo cried.

  “He’s dead, Ryo.”

  The shooting outside had stopped and it was eerily quiet.

  My voice fell to a whisper. “We gotta go.”

  I dragged him all the way out into the hallway before he got his footing.

  The shooters outside would be careful, but they’d come inside soon and Ryo needed to be anywhere but out in the open when they did. My bandmates didn’t matter, I knew this, but I also knew Ryo couldn’t leave them behind, so I had to play the yeah, I’m worried, too part. I peered into the next bedroom. It looked like Swiss cheese. Seamus’s arm was hanging over the edge of the bed, blood streaming down his fingers into a pool on the floor, but Karim was still alive somehow. He’d been hit in the chest.

  “Can you move?” I asked him.

  “Yes,” he wheezed.

  He tried to get up but started to fall. I didn’t have time for this but knew there was no way Ryo could leave him, so I caught him, threw his arm over my shoulders, and wrapped my arm around his back.

  “I got you. Come on,” I grunted.

  The tunnel to the barn was our best and only chance. Halfway to the kitchen, I heard a creak on the wooden floorboards outside the back door. Whoever was out there had a straight view of the cellar door through the kitchen window. The stairs to Frank and Charlotte’s room were to our right and were our only option now. I didn’t like it, but it would have to work.

  I looked at Ryo and held my finger up to my mouth. He nodded. I then motioned silently with my head for him to go upstairs. One creak, one slip and we’d have been toast, but the stairs miraculously didn’t betray us. In the master bedroom, Frank and Charlotte lay dead. Charlotte was still in bed; Frank was slumped over by a window. Ryo nearly let out a scream, but I slapped my free hand across his mouth before any sound got out.

  The layout of the upstairs was simple: the master bedroom and a bathroom. Nothing fancy.

  “Closet,” I whispered to Ryo and silently reminded him to step quietly.

  Karim was struggling to hold his weight, so there was no chance he’d be able to walk softly. I adjusted my grip, heaved him off the ground, and carried him over.

  The clomping of boots on the hardwood stairs started.

  There wasn’t room for all of us in the tiny closet. I shoved Karim on one side and pushed Ryo toward the other. I then halfway closed the accordion-style doors, leaving the middle of the closet totally exposed. It was a simple trick but one that had to work. I quickly slid onto my belly and ducked under the bed right as someone entered the room. All I could see were their tactical, Special Ops–style boots. I’d had a pair just like them once.

  The boots came toward the bed and paused. I got my pistol ready. Whoever it was spun around, checked out the bathroom, and then paused in front of the closet. My heart was pounding so hard I was shocked they couldn’t hear it.

  “All clear,” a man with a French accent called out. “Just an old man and woman. No sign of Hutch or the others.”

  My stomach dropped. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hutch? Had I heard that right? Hutch didn’t exist anymore. The only ones who know Hutch is Bobby are . . . FATE? What in the hell was going on here?

  “Well, there are three missing, so come on down,” an oddly familiar female voice crackled over a radio. “We need to find them.”

  How do I know that voice? Who is she?

  “Roger that.” The boots began to walk away. “Have you already started?”

  “Told you to hurry,” the female voice said.

  “Dammit, S.”

  Karim let out a deep, gurgling wheeze. I cringed. Luckily, the man was too busy thundering down the stairs to hear it. Started what? It didn’t take long to figure it out. Smoke. It was pitch black in here, but that didn’t mean my nose didn’t work. They’d set the house on fire. Destroy all the evidence and smoke out anyone hiding—all in one go. Exactly what I would have done. Tip of the hat, gents. We were screwed nice and good now. No attackers would be inside anymore, though, so at least we had that going for us.

  I slid out from under the bed and opened the closet doors as I whispered, “It’s me.”

  Ryo untucked himself and got up. Karim was fading fast.

  The smoke was starting to get thick. We had a few minutes, tops. I had Ryo sit down with Karim on the bed while I snuck glances out each of the windows. Yeah, we were screwed. There was an attacker stationed on each side of the house, ready to take out anyone who tried to escape. Correction: tip of the hat and a nod to you, fellas. They were giving us no chance.

  Someone would have to be the distraction, pay the ultimate sacrifice, and die, leading the men away from the others, so the others, more specifically, Ryo, would at least have a shot. This was it. This was my purpose. Time to pay the fiddler. It’s been a helluva ride, folks.

  I was about to tell them the plan when Karim spoke up in a choked voice: “I’ll distract them while you two escape.”

  I shook my head. So did Ryo.

  “I mean it. My final breath will come soon enough. Please allow me the honor of using that last breath to save the lives of my brothers.”

  Ryo swept him into a hug. I did the same.

  I pulled the gun out from my sweats and offered it to him as I lied, “Here, take it. I found it under the bed a second ago.” Neither of them had any clue what I’d done outside to the first wave of attackers, and it was better they didn’t.

  “I don’t know how to use those,” Karim said, waving it away. “The Texas cowboy should kn
ow how to use that, right? All you Americans have guns, no?” he joked, cracking a pained smile. “I don’t have long, so . . .” He nodded and stood straight.

  After another deep, labored breath, Karim climbed out the window, shambled across the roof, and dropped to the ground. He was spotted instantly by the attacker watching that side of the house.

  “Runner!” he shouted. He raised his gun, but before he could fire, I took aim with my pistol and dropped him. Karim took off running into the field. I waited until I saw that he was being chased before saying to Ryo, “Let’s go.” We headed out the window on the opposite side of the room.

  The heat of the roof was hot enough to burn our bare feet. We jumped off quickly, thankful for the cool, soft, and muddy ground.

  We reached the barn and practically crashed through the side door to get in. The lights inside were a welcome contrast to the night outside. I smiled at the sight of Frank’s truck. The smile disappeared quickly, though. From the corner of my eye, up in the rafters, a black figure popped out from behind a line of hay bales and opened fire. I bear-hugged Ryo and launched the two of us behind the side of a horse stall for cover. A line of bullets pinged across the metal barrier. After a quick glance to make sure Ryo was okay, I took out my pistol and popped up, ready to fire. The figure was gone.

  “Go for the door. You can make it,” the strangely familiar female voice called out from somewhere on the level above us.

  “You think?” I joked as I played along, ducking back behind the safety of the metal stall. I knew this voice for sure.

  The voice had a point. The door wasn’t too far away. If I used myself as a shield, I could get Ryo through it, but then what? I’d be dead and Ryo had already proven he was a bit of a freezes-in-the-moment type. How far would he get? And then there was the chance of a bullet going through me and into him. No, Frank’s truck was it. But how to reach it? No doubt whoever was up there had called her friends in from wherever they’d killed Karim. We had thirty seconds, tops, before they reached us.