by B. C. Tweedt
Greyson backed away as John reset the trap and turned to him wildly, still gripping the shotgun. “I knew it. You are the one they’re looking for.”
Greyson nodded, gulping, the sight of the drone still seared into his mind.
“They sent that after you. You have to leave. Now.”
John grabbed his backpack’s strap and shoved him through the house, ignoring Kit’s growls as the dog followed close at his heels.
“But they’ll be coming here. You’ll be – ”
“Shut up! Ol’ Steve – my neighbor – has horses, to the south. Head to the hills and stay off the roads. I’d give you my car, but they’ll be watching the roads.”
He shoved him toward the backdoor and planted his feet, holding his shotgun at the ready. For a moment they didn’t say anything, and Greyson fought to think of the right words to say.
“I – I’m sorry.”
“I said shut up! Just go!”
Greyson nodded and motioned for Kit to follow. As the door shut him out in the rain, he took one last look at John through the back window. Then, turning toward the neighbor’s house, he ran as fast as he could, not looking back.
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“Alright, squirt,” Calvin said, typing furiously at his laptop while Sam watched from across the table, bored. “We need a project. You’ll read books for homework, but when we’re together, we’re working on something challenging.”
Sam shrugged, snapping out of his boredom. “Okay. Sounds cool. What’s the project?”
Calvin shrugged back. “Don’t know. Got any ideas?”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “Me? Aren’t you supposed to come up with that stuff?”
He shook his head. “I could, but you’ll be more engaged if you come up with it. Just for fun, think of anything you wish you could do with a computer. Hack the Chinese embassy, look through your girlfriend’s webcam, change traffic lights…”
The idea hit Sam in a flash. “I got it!” Sam blurted. “I want to send my friends and their families to the Bahamas.”
“That’s nice of you. But too easy.”
“Under different names.”
“Ah, that’s better.”
“And they’re under FBI protection.”
“Oh. Wow.”
Sam nodded, smiling. “But I understand if you can’t do it.”
Calvin laughed. “I can do anything, but you’re being very specific. If this is something you want to do for real, I’d get fired for sure. Maybe worse.”
“Couldn’t you do it without getting noticed – if it were for real?”
“I think the FBI would notice when the people they’re protecting are no longer there.”
“Then we convince them that they’re not supposed to be there anymore.”
Calvin grabbed his can of Mountain Dew and took a long swig. Then, after glancing around at the others on the plane, he turned back to Sam. “I know the situation your little friends are in, you know?”
“Okay.”
“So I just want to make sure that you know we’re playing games here. That’s what you’re saying…right? Not for real.”
Sam leaned in and his eyes grew serious, examining Calvin’s face for clues to how he should proceed. And then he laughed. “Haha! Your face! No, not for real! Geez! But we can pretend; you can show me how you would do it if it were for real.”
Calvin wiped his sleeve against his forehead, relieved. “Whew! I thought you really wanted to do it. That would have been crazy stupid and risky. It would even require forging your dad’s signature.”
“Oh, leave that to me. His campaign manager hands him a packet of papers needing his signature every morning. Slip it in there and he wouldn’t notice.”
Calvin stared at him.
“I mean…” Sam winked at him. “If it were for real.”
Calvin’s sly smile grew. “This is going to be fun.”
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The horse whinnied and reared up, as if it could sense the danger coming. Greyson fought with the bridle from below and just managed to slip it on before it reared again. Cinching the saddle was easier.
Checking the straps one more time and dodging the horse’s flank as it jerked in the stable, he mounted it and bounced his heels against its side, guiding it through the door and into the storm.
Kit trotted behind nicely, but not right behind, as if he knew what a horse’s hooves were capable of doing.
Sweeping the neighbor’s land for any signs he was being watched, Greyson maneuvered to the back, dismounted to unlatch the gate, and stared across the overgrown field to John’s farmhouse.
“He’ll be fine, Kit. He’s probably going to turn us in anyway.”
His conscience nagged at him, and so did John’s question. What do you stand for? It was his dad’s hat. His father had dared him to keep it until he was able to give it back to him, so it only made sense that Greyson would stand for Gray. That was what he was living for now. But ‘Good’ and ‘Guts’ and ‘Glory’ were all fitting as well. He wanted to stand for them all.
Enough thinking. I finally have transportation. Dad’s waiting.
He found the stirrup with his foot and launched himself onto the anxious horse. “Yah!”
Mud flung from the horse’s hooves as it galloped toward the forested hills.
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John had loaded his pockets with shotgun shells, taken off his shoes, and steeled himself inside the protective walls of the staircase leading from the ground floor to the bedrooms that had once been filled with his wife and children. He never went up there any more. Not since he could sleep on the couch downstairs. The house had outgrown him.
But his new guests were not welcome. They weren’t the usual strays that would wonder in from the roadblock, looking for a hotel or a bathroom. They were government goons who flew a drone onto his property, spying on him. Sure, they were after the boy for whatever reason, but it was about time they found out that they could not take whatever they wanted from him.
They’d taken all of his guns they knew about after he saw a Veterans’ Affairs psychiatrist who had promptly diagnosed him with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. They’d basically taken his wife when her government-mandated insurance forced her to wait months for a transplant. She had passed away, still waiting. And they’d taken his sons. They were now the government’s very own. He didn’t blame his sons. The government had deep pockets. But they were no longer his.
He heard the sound of tires on gravel approaching from the driveway. Though he was hidden from any of the windows, the headlights reflected on the wall like a passing wave.
As car doors closed and the headlights extinguished, John told himself to calm down. If they knocked, he’d disable the trap and would answer normally. But he knew they wouldn’t. That wasn’t their style anymore. Their drone had already provided enough evidence for an automatic search warrant, and he’d provided them with enough reason to suspect he was armed and dangerous.
He waited, pressed against the wall, listening over the sound of his old heart feeling more alive than it should be. Flashbacks of Vietnam slapped hard at his eyes. Hiding in the tall grass, listening for footsteps and the enemy’s steady breath. Darkness and death all around. His rifle the only thing protecting him. Finger on the trigger. Eyes closed, blocking it out, controlling his own breath. A click of foot on twig. A rush of grass on pant-leg.
A twist of a door knob.
They weren’t knocking.
Chapter 21
The traps worked their wonders.
The side door and front door opened at the same time and delivered blows to the intruders, breaking one’s nose and striking the other one senseless with a log to the forehead.
John snapped to action and whirled from the staircase to the kitchen where he fired a shell into the one holding his bloody face. His lanky body flung backwards like a battering ram had slammed into his chest.
He turned and hobbled swiftly to the fron
t door, barely making a noise in his socks. The shotgun shook in his hands, but his eyes were focused and knees steady.
Another one was going for the window. John’s shot blew the window apart, shattering it in the intruder’s face, sending him staggering and screaming.
The one at the front door was still lying on the ground, out cold.
How many more?
He kept his aim at the one by the front door, waiting for someone to come to his rescue, and backed toward his staircase refuge. He had five more shots before he had to reload.
And then he heard movement again from the kitchen. Glancing in that direction, he shifted his aim and approached the tile floor.
He listened long and hard before making his move.
He swung around the wall. He pointed the gun at the side door, at a window, and again at the doorway.
No one.
When he swung back toward the front door, an incredible bang startled him. A wave of fear and cold hit him so hard he dropped his gun.
His mind raced and confusion wracked his eyes as they searched for an answer. When the gunman stepped forward from the doorway, he knew what had happened.
He’d been shot.
Looking down to his stomach, he saw the wound and his hands gravitated toward it. Suddenly his legs felt weak and he had to kneel. He thought about reaching for his gun again, but the gunman was striding toward him, his pistol still leveled and ready to fire.
Another surprise took him off guard. His vision was blurred, but he thought the gunman was a kid. A teenager with a crooked nose and hateful eyes.
“Where is he?” the teenaged gunman asked, putting the gun barrel up to the old man’s forehead.
John clutched at his stomach and gritted his teeth as the pain began radiating up his spine. He wanted to throw up. “Go to h – ”
The gunman cracked John over the head with the butt of his gun. Blackness erupted inside his head as he lost consciousness, but the bottom of the staircase blinked into view a few seconds later. He heard voices like echoes from a distance. A boy’s deep voice in the room. “My face, man! I’m bleeding. There’s glass in it! We got to go!”
A cool response. “Shut up. Almost done here.”
John just wanted a few seconds to fall asleep, here on the floor, but the gunmen rolled him over and stood over him, the pistol pointed at his head.
“I’ll ask one more time. Where. Is. He?”
John closed his eyes, wondering where death would bring him.
But in an instant, a flurry of sounds erupted around him. A splash of glass, paws hitting the floor, a guttural bark, a human scream. A dull thud that knocked the gunman onto the staircase followed by the clinking of a ball bearing landing on the hardwood floor – rolling into the pool of blood by his side.
“Holy crap!”
The growl of the dog and more thuds as a body hit the floor. An angry dog ripping at flesh.
John opened his eyes, drifting at the edge of consciousness to see a boy in a hoodie and a red cap crawling over the windowsill. There was a scramble of feet as the gunman jerked from the staircase toward his gun, but John saw it out of the corner of his eye and pushed it toward the dog.
The gunman cursed, stalled over John’s body, and then ran toward the kitchen’s exit.
John’s eyes closed. His eyelids felt like lead.
“Kit, stop!”
The growling and tearing ceased, and suddenly the boy and dog were at his side. He could hear their breath over the sounds of the gunmen escaping outside.
“John. John! What do I do? You’re shot.”
“I know, boy,” he muttered. “I know.”
“What do I do? Press it?”
He felt the boy’s hands press and the pain forced him to groan. “Ugh! Just…just call…911.”
Greyson gulped down a breath and kept his hands pressed against the wound. He felt the warm blood oozing against his palms, through his fingers. He had to keep pressure on the wound, to keep the blood inside. If he called the police, he would have to leave John. But he had to, or John would die.
“I – I…okay. Just…here. Kit, come.”
John laid his head back as he felt the dog’s paw take the place of Greyson’s hands on his wound.
“Stay, boy. I’ll be right back.”
Time passed slowly as he listened to Greyson talk to the 911 operator, felt the boy’s hands once again on the numb wound, and heard his reassurances.
“You’ll be fine. You’ve gone through worse, right? And you showed them.”
“Who…who were…?”
“They were terrorists. After me. It was my fault. But…I came back. I want to stand for ‘Good’, too. But I realized too late…”
John’s breathing was heavy, but he felt too weak to respond. Too cold.
Several minutes passed before they heard the sirens. Greyson attempted a smile at the man. “I gotta go. Please don’t tell them about me – the cops – or anyone.”
John nodded.
“You’ll be alright. As good as new.”
With no response, Greyson’s eyes watered, hoping what he had said was true. Then, working up the courage, he put John’s hands on his own wound, and bolted away.
Splashing through the wet grass and mud, Greyson swung himself onto the horse, still reeling from the battle. Tire tracks had torn up the dirt in the front where the gunmen had escaped. Now they were gone. But for how long? They had found him here, somehow. They could find him again. Chase him down no matter how fast he ran.
“Yah!”
The horse blasted away, sending the pellets of rain into Greyson’s face like marbles. Soon the horse reached the hills, and they slowed during the ascent. Lightning flashed and the thunder rolled over him like a passing train.
Once safe on a flat overlook, he watched the lights from the ambulance and police car as they pulled into John’s driveway. His bloody hands were shaking as he wiped them on his hoodie.
He felt safer in the hills, but his mind was far from okay. Fear and worry plagued him. How did they find me? An image of the drone, its camera’s iris zooming in and out like an eye’s pupil was still frozen in his mind – sure to haunt his dreams later.
Will John survive?
Looking through the rain at the farmhouse lit with the ambulance’s red and blue lights, the guilt scraped at his heart like a dagger, nagging at him – rebuking him for not going back sooner.
He added another notch to his list of demons. Another life might have been taken because of him. Eight thousand, plus Liam, plus John. More than a legion.
When the EMTs carried the stretcher with John’s body to the ambulance, Greyson turned, heeled the horse, and disappeared into the forest.
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“My face!” Buzz screamed, touching the glass shards sticking from his fleshy cheeks. Blood dripped from his chin and arm to the SUV’s floor. He shook with the shock, crying off and on. If he opened his eyes, he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to see. “My face, man!”
“Shut up!” Orion bellowed from the driver’s seat, trying to navigate the gravel road with the rain covering the windshield between every slash of the wipers.
“And my arm! That dog! That stupid dog! We have to get to the hospital!”
“No! Shut up! They will be looking for anyone suspicious after that. You’re not going to die.”
“But Jeremy, man.”
Orion gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. “I know, I know.” They had left Lanky’s body behind.
Their other brother, Glasses, groaned from the backseat where they had thrown him, unconscious, before speeding away. Despite the log to the forehead, he was still alive.
Orion steered onto the main road and had just gotten up to speed as a police car sped past in the opposite direction. Orion nodded to himself, thinking. Greyson had called 911, just like he had expected. That meant either the cops would find him and take him back to Iowa, or he would run before they got there.<
br />
Buzz’s painful whines and Glasses’ groans soon irritated Orion. They were such pansies. Wimps. But they would only get stronger through this. He would show them how to be strong.
“We’re going to kill him. Now.”
He turned sharply onto another gravel road, toward the dark hills. That’s where he’d be headed. They would cut him off. No escape.
Buzz whined, trying to hold his arm out straight, pressing his torn flesh back over the wide-open gash where the dog’s teeth had pierced and shook furiously. He breathed heavily and put his head against the window, muttering something indiscernible.
Orion sneered. “Just shut up.”
Chapter 22
As the hours wore on, Greyson’s horse grew more and more tired, huffing and puffing, even staggering at times. Kit, too, was weary, trotting at their side – and they were all soaked to the bone.
“Come on! Yah!”
Greyson heeled the horse over and over.
“Yah!”
He heeled it harder, venting his frustration, and the horse reacted likewise, bucking just as hard.
Before he knew it, Greyson had spun to the ground in a muddy splash.
Kit was at his side, but the pain had jarred his spine, stunning him. For a moment he sat in the puddle, feeling it soak through his shorts. Like the straw that broke the camel’s back, his anger broke free.
He slapped at the puddled ground, shaking with the cold and holding off the tears. The rain seemed to find just the right angles to make it through the trees, pestering his face. When Kit tried to comfort, Greyson pushed him away with muddy hands, grumbling. For now, he wanted to stay in the mud with his thoughts and his guilt, like the demon-possessed man who had escaped to the tombs. He deserved it.
He raised his hands to ward off Kit’s attempts to comfort, but he froze, staring at them as if they weren’t his own.
Though his Dad had a wide smile on his face, his hands were covered in dried blood. Little Greyson stopped short of a hug, gasped, and ran to his mother.
“It’s okay, honey,” his mother soothed, rubbing his back. “It’s not his blood. He’s not hurt.”
“Then…whose blood is it?”