Half Past Midnight

by Jeff Brackett

  Finally, he fired. Three shots, deafening at such intimate range, and for the next second or two, I waited to feel the agony of a bullet ripping through me. When it didn’t happen, I realized he had somehow missed, and I gathered my legs beneath me and launched myself at him. Diving to the ground in front of him, I tucked and rolled, lashing out with my feet as I spiraled out of it. One foot behind his ankle, the other on his knee, and he dropped to the ground in a heap. I rolled to my feet, relinquishing the hold, and stood on his knee for a second as I leapt for the pistol that had gone flying from his grip. I expected to have to fight him for the gun; the leg-lock I’d used might hurt a bit, but it was far from debilitating. Surprisingly, I got the handgun and spun to face him again without resistance. He just lay there with his hands above his head as I pointed the pistol.

  “It’s me, Sensei!” a familiar voice screamed, terrified. “Don’t shoot!”

  “Leeland!” Ken’s voice came from behind me.

  It was all happening too quickly, and I stood confused for a moment, panting and trying to sort everything out. Eyes wide and frightened, Billy lay on the ground before me. I was stunned, disbelieving. But as I looked closer, there was no doubt. By the faint moonlight, I could just make out his features, even the mud-coated tattoo on his forehead.

  “He was going to shoot you,” Billy babbled. “I didn’t have time to warn you! I’m sorry, but I followed you, and… I had to show you I wasn’t like them. I had to show you! I just wanted to help!”

  “Leeland!!” Splashing, running footsteps came up from behind as my mind began to comprehend what the boy was telling me; I whirled around to look. The last soldier lay dead in the mud. It hadn’t been Ken I’d heard coming from downstream. Ken was just now rounding the last bend, rifle at the ready, trying to make sense of the scene before him.

  “Lee? What’s going on?”

  I dropped my aim wearily. “It’s okay.” They were the right words for both Ken and Billy. “Everything’s okay.”

  Ken went back up the ravine to regroup our people, while Billy explained how he had followed us to the tree line-I recalled the noises in the trees on the way out-and had seen Ken and me running to the ravine. It had taken him some time, but he’d finally made it to the gully to follow us. The sounds of our battle had kept him cautious, and he repeatedly poked his head above the top, much as Ken and I had, to keep track of what was happening. By the time he got close enough, only two soldiers remained. One of them spotted Billy and started to shoot, but I cut him down before he could fire. Billy had watched as I ducked, and the last soldier scuttled to the edge of the ravine and dropped into it downstream from my position. He realized the danger that Ken and I were in and raced desperately to help, arriving barely in time.

  Billy and I searched the soldiers and had an interesting assortment of equipment piled up when Ken returned with the rest of our people. Automatic weapons, ammunition, radios, and several of the strange-looking night goggles. Ken immediately began issuing orders. “Doug, weren’t you a mechanic?”

  The man turned. “Yeah.”

  “Check out those Humvees. See if any of them are still drivable.” As Doug jogged over to the jeeps, Ken addressed the rest of us. “I want two people per body. Search them for anything we can use. Take two minutes only. We don’t know whether or not they got word to anyone else, so assume the worst.”

  When they appeared to hesitate, Ken yelled, “Go!”

  Ken didn’t know that Billy and I had already searched the bodies, so I got his attention and waved him over. We showed him the small pile of gear we had gotten, and he examined the night goggles with interest.

  “Generation threes,” he declared. “These weren’t around when I was in the service, but I’ve read about them.” He slipped them on, feeling along the right side and muttering, “Should be a switch. There!” He turned and looked around. “Whoa!” Reaching up, he tripped the switch again. “Very nice! Both lowlight amplification and infrared.”

  He flipped the switch and removed the goggles. “How many did we get?”

  “Looks like ten,” I told him. “We lost a couple to head shots.” My stomach threatened to rebel again at the thought of one particular body, the head above the eyebrows missing as he lay facedown in the brush. That particular sight had caused me to heave the contents of my stomach into the bushes nearby. “We also got three more of the walkie-talkies.”

  Ken handed the goggles back to me. “Good, two goggles per group. Pass out the radios, too.” He checked to see what frequency they were set on. “Change the radio settings. Set them all on thirty-seven. That gives us four radios. My group will do without a radio, the rest of you take one per group. Keep each other informed of your progress. If you run into trouble, pull back and yell for help. We can’t afford to lose any more people.”

  Everyone nodded. The latest skirmish and the resulting deaths had brought home just how vulnerable we were.

  Doug the Mechanic trotted over to Ken. “Two of the Humvees are shot up from hell to breakfast, too damaged to use. The last one has two flat tires and a lot of holes in the chassis, but the engine turns over and seems to run all right with no fluid leaks I can see. I got some people getting tires from the others, and it’ll be ready to go in a minute.”

  “Okay.” Ken turned to the rest of the group. His expression somber, he addressed us. We were his to command. We knew it and, finally, he seemed to know it as well. “All right, folks. We lost some people… some good people. But we got some good equipment, transportation,” he paused as he glanced at Billy. “And it looks like we gained us a good man, too.”

  Billy looked surprised at the compliment and grinned shyly.

  “Let’s get into town and get our supplies,” Ken finished.

  As luck would have it, all three of our casualties were from group two, so Ken assigned Billy and me to them in order to help balance the numbers. Then he and his group took the Humvee and headed for the fabric store. They would be the first into town, and I figured that could go either way. It might be that they would be able to get in and out before any of Larry’s boys knew anything was up. If they were spotted, though, they would be the first to be attacked. They would also be far enough ahead of the rest of us that our chances of helping them would be remote, at best.

  My new target was the Rejas High School football stadium. I glanced at the faces of my new companions. Sarah Graham, Rene Herrera, Billy Worecski, and a man who had the unlikely name of Gene McQueen. Gene was the only one I didn’t already know.

  “Who knows the quickest way to the stadium?” I asked.

  “Denley Avenue to the warehouse district,” Sarah piped up, “skip east three blocks to Stadium Drive. That’ll put us right in front of the gate.”

  I handed her one of our group’s two sets of PVS-7s, showed her how they worked, and waved her to the point position. “Lead us in.”

  She slipped on the goggles, fiddled with the adjustments for a minute, and headed out at a trot. I put on the other pair and took the rear.

  We made it to the stadium without further incident, but there, our plan fell apart. “I guess we know where the rest of our people are now,” Sarah whispered dryly. Just as she had promised, we had come out of an alley directly across from the Eagle Stadium. We hid in the dark confines of a large warehouse, staring out at what had been transformed into a makeshift concentration camp. The trashcan fires out front had forced Sarah and me to turn the light amplification on our goggles down to minimum.

  “Lord,” I whispered, comparing this crowd to the density of people I had seen back at Amber’s home. A rough estimate placed the majority of Rejas’s citizens in the stadium, either on the football field or in the bleachers. They were well-guarded with a number of Larry’s boys, armed to the teeth, placed around the perimeter.

  “Now what?” Rene’s voice came from behind me. I turned and saw her form illuminated in the ghostly green of low light amplification. I reached up and turned off my goggles.


  “Hell if I know.” I blinked for a moment against the darkness. “Anyone have any bright ideas?”

  “Check with the other groups,” Billy suggested.

  I nodded. “Sounds like a plan. Maybe someone else will have a suggestion.”

  I pulled out the radio and keyed the transceiver. “Dawcett here… anyone listening?”

  A second later, Eric answered, “I’m here, Lee.”

  Mark chimed in. “What’ve you got?”

  “I’m just across from the stadium,” I responded. “Looks like they’re keeping all our people here. They’re turning the place into a concentration camp. There’s no way we can get to the supplies without creating a stir.”

  Ken’s voice surprised me. “Can you get any of our people out without any major risk?”

  Just hearing his voice made me feel a little better. I had expected to have to make this decision on my own. “Man, am I glad to hear from you. I thought you didn’t have a radio.”

  “I didn’t. We ran across a couple of Larry’s men that won’t be needing theirs any more.”

  “Understood.”

  “So, can you get anyone out?”

  “We could probably get most of them out, if we could get everyone to work together, all at the same time. But we would probably lose a lot of people doing it. There’s about thirty guards scattered around.”

  Sarah cursed and whipped off her goggles. She dropped rapidly to a sitting position beneath the window sill and rubbed her eyes. “Better take a look down the street to the west. And turn off your goggles if you don’t want to be blinded.” She looked directly at me, so I could tell she hadn’t suffered any serious eye damage.

  “Hang on, Ken. Something’s happening.”

  I slipped up to her window and peeked out.

  “Um, Ken?”

  “What is it, Lee?”

  “Things just got a little more complicated.” I watched one of Larry’s M1’s, a single spotlight mounted on front, trundling up the street toward the stadium.

  “Where exactly are the supplies?” Sarah whispered excitedly. I could tell that she had thought of something, but I also knew we were about out of time.

  I shook my head. “They’re in the storage room behind the concession stand. We’d never make it without being seen.”

  I turned my attention back to the radio. “Ken, one of the tanks is on its way here.”

  “Damn!” It was silent for a moment. Then he came back on, sounding resigned. “Okay, Leeland, get out of there.”

  I hesitated. I knew there was no way for us to get in without a fight and, with that tank coming toward us, there was no way we could win that fight. Still, I racked my brain, trying to think of an alternative.

  “We need those supplies, Ken!” But it wasn’t the supplies I was worried about, and we both knew it. I was pleading with him. Come up with something, I thought fiercely at him. Pull that rabbit out of the hat again!

  “Not now, Lee. We’ll have to find a way in later.”

  “C’mon, Ken, we can’t just leave these people here. There must be something we can do.”

  But I knew better. So did Ken. “Leeland, you’ve got to get out of there. You can’t win against that Abrams.” I turned to the four faces around me.

  “I know it’s hard,” Ken continued, “but we all knew it could happen.”

  They would follow my lead. I could see that.

  “You have to leave.” Ken’s voice again.

  I didn’t answer right away, thinking through my options.

  “Leeland? You hear me?”

  If I decided to fight it out, they would stick by me, no questions asked.

  “Leeland?”

  Ironically, it was that realization that decided me.

  “Leeland, you have to abort!”

  I couldn’t lead them into a no-win situation.

  “Leeland, abort your mission! You made me take command of this thing, now you’d better take my goddamned orders! You hear me?”

  I stared at the radio as if it were something foreign.

  “Leeland!”

  I slowly raised it back up to my mouth and keyed the mike once more. “I hear you, Ken,” I said quietly. “You’re right.”

  None of the others questioned me. They knew what was at stake. “We’re aborting.” I felt numb as I released the transmitter.

  I noticed my hands shaking and took a deep breath to help steady them, then looked at the rest of the group. “Let’s go home.” One by one, we slipped out of the warehouse.

  Sarah, once more taking the point position, was first out the door. Gene followed, then Rene and Billy. I took up the rear again. It wasn’t until we were five blocks away that Gene noticed Sarah had disappeared. He passed the word back down the line, and I got a sudden sinking feeling in my gut, remembering the excitement in her voice when she had asked where the supplies were. I feared I might know what was going through her head.

  Flagging the others down, I gathered them around me. “I have to go back and stop Sarah before she does something stupid. The rest of you get out to the fertilizer plant. Try to link up with the other groups if you can.”

  I handed Billy the radio. “Wait until you’re out of town and in the trees. Then call for everyone’s status. Find out where the closest group is and try to get to them. Wait a bit, though.” I sighed. “Ken’ll know something’s up when he hears your voice instead of mine, and I don’t want to give him a stroke just yet.”

  “You want me to come with you?”

  I shook my head. “We started out with five in this group. It’s bad enough that I’m just sending three of you back. I can just imagine what Ken will say when you tell him what’s going on with me and Sarah.”

  Billy frowned. “Just when I’d gotten him to think of me as a person.”

  I squeezed his shoulder. “That won’t change.” I grinned a little. “What he’ll think of me is another thing altogether.”

  Billy smiled a bit.

  “Go on, kid.”

  He nodded and joined Rene and Gene. Together, the three of them disappeared into the darkness.

  Chapter 14

  August 17 / 2:18 a.m.

  Par grand dangiers le captif eschape,

  Peu de temps grand a fortune changee:

  Dans le palais le peuple est attrape,

  Par bon augure la cite assiegee.

  Through great dangers the captive escaped:

  In a short time great his fortune changed.

  In the palace the people are trapped,

  Through good omen the city besieged.

  Nostradamus — Century 2, Quatrain 66

  “Here we go again,” I thought, once more slipping through the shadows of Rejas. It took only a few minutes to retrace the route we had taken from the warehouse. Slipping inside, I looked around for Sarah. “Sarah?” I whispered. No response. I hadn’t really expected any.

  I peered through the window again. The tank sat just outside the main entrance to the stadium. The hatches were open, and the spotlight shone on the street before the armored monster. Someone had rewired an old CD player and hooked it into the tank. An unknown rap group proclaimed their philosophy in barely intelligible English to a deafening thunder of bass.

  “Beat yo’ woman ’til she scream, ’cause you know the bitch, she live fo’ it.”

  Dozens of uniformed men thrashed and gyrated in the circle of light before the tank. Someone had found some booze, and most of them had a bottle of their preferred poison in hand. Several of the guards were milling around, joking with the tank’s crew and smoking. I wondered where they had found cigarettes, and just how desperate you had to be to smoke two-year-old tobacco. The scent of marijuana reached me about the time that I noticed the cigarettes were all hand rolled. Tobacco was a thing of the past around here, as the local climate wasn’t conducive to its growth. Cannabis was apparently not as selective in its climate.

  I scanned the area for some sign of Sarah. Nothing.

  I s
lipped the goggles on my head and turned the switch to infrared. The world of infrared disoriented me at first. Tiny dots danced around, flaring briefly before glowing red faces as the men toked, smoked, and joked. As I got used to it, I quit trying to focus on details, instead watching the larger picture. The men around the tank I could ignore for the time being. If they had seen Sarah, they surely wouldn’t be standing around partying.

  I looked for other heat sources. The light on the tank, the trash can fires that were illuminating the area, the glowing red blob writhing inside the stadium that was the crowded mass of prisoners. Several guards still glowed where they patrolled outside the chain link fence that surrounded the football field.

  “Come on, Sarah,” I muttered, “where the hell are you?”

  My jaw dropped when I finally spotted her. It never would have worked with seasoned military troops. Hell, it never would have worked with any disciplined group, but these clowns were hardly disciplined. And they were obviously not observant enough to spot a single hidden hitchhiker lying flat on the pavement underneath the very tank they were partying around.

  Truthfully though, if she hadn’t shown up as a heat source, I probably wouldn’t have seen her, either. The spotlight that brightened their impromptu dance floor left the night outside their oasis of light a solid, opaque black. Someone would have had to shine a light directly under the tank to spot her. From what I could see, there was no way for her to get any closer to the stadium without crossing in front of the perimeter guards.

  Her dilemma was obvious. She would never make it any further without help, but neither could she retreat without being spotted. Unfortunately, the solution was just as obvious.

  “Wonderful,” I muttered, “just freakin’ wonderful!”

  I bolted out of the door and back into the darkness, this time heading away from the stadium for a block before cutting right and jogging down the next block parallel to Stadium Drive. I imagined how I would explain this one to Ken and Jim. “Well, guys, she was already under the tank. What else could I do?”