Fifty Falling Stars

by Wesley Higginbotham

  Clay grunted. “Maybe.”

  The truck came to a stop in the center of the road twenty feet in front of Scott. Clay hung back about ten feet behind Scott. Two motorcycles pulled up on the left side of the truck. Another stopped on the other side. The men on the motorcycles got off as the passenger side door of the truck opened and a man got out of the truck. One of the men who had climbed off of the motorcycles aimed a pistol at Clay and Scott. The man from the passenger’s side of the truck raised a shotgun at them. Clay and Scott tensed.

  A man stepped from the driver’s side of the beat-up, old, red Chevy truck. “What you men doing out here?” The man said through a bushy beard.

  “Just passing through.” Scott said. “We don’t want any trouble.”

  “Where ya headed?” One of the men from the motorcycles asked.

  “South. To stay with family.” Scott said. “Just let us be and we’ll keep moving on. Like I said, we don’t want any trouble.”

  “That’s good.” The driver of the truck said. “We don’t want any either. But you see, you gotta pay to pass through here. This is now a toll road.”

  “We don’t have any money.” Clay said.

  “That’s fine, boy. Those guns will work just as well. Besides, we can’t let just anyone come through our area with guns. That’d just be irresponsible.” The man from the passenger’s side said.

  “Absolutely not.” Scott said as he adjusted his grip on his rifle.

  “I wouldn’t do that, gramps.” One of the younger men on the motorcycles said.

  Scott looked around. They faced five men. The only one who didn’t have a gun pointed at them was the man with the beard who had driven the truck. He obviously led this little group of thugs. Scott knew they were screwed. The best they could hope for was to take out one or two of the men before they were gunned down. “Let’s see what’s in those packs.” The truck passenger said.

  Scott and Clay hesitated. The driver of the truck scratched at the blue du rag on his head and spoke again. “Now you son of a bitches are just being rude. Drop your damn guns and hand over those backpacks!”

  Scott hesitated. He turned to look at Clay as he began to raise his gun. Scott stopped him with a shake of his head. He turned back to the thugs, let out a defeated sigh, and laid his gun down in the road. He heard Clay do the same. He hoped that these assholes would just take their stuff and go. With any luck, they wouldn’t notice the rest of the family, and they could continue their journey without anyone getting hurt.

  Two of the men who had ridden the motorcycles slung their guns over their shoulders and came over to Scott. The one in the John Deer hat picked up Scott’s gun while the other in torn jeans and sunglasses moved to pick up Clay’s. As the man stood from picking up Clay’s gun, he caught a glimpse of a face poking out of the grass in the ditch about twenty yards ahead to his left. He slammed the butt of Clay’s gun into Clay’s midsection, doubling him over. He raised the weapon, aiming at the bushes where the face had been. “We got more people in the ditch, Boss!” He yelled.

  The leader frowned and looked at Scott. “How many more people are in your group?”

  Scott stared at the man.

  The leader pulled a pistol from the waistband of his pants and aimed at Scott’s head. “Whoever is in the ditch has till the count of three to come out into the road with your hands up or I’m putting a bullet in the old man’s head!” No one moved. “One!” The man counted. “Two!” Scott saw satisfaction in the man’s eye. He turned around to see the rest of the family walk out from the ditch.

  “Well, well. You got some nice looking women with you.” The leader said. “This changes everything.”

  “Just take whatever you want, and let us go on our way. Just don’t hurt anyone” Scott said.

  “Fuck you, old man.” The leader said. “We’ll do whatever we want and you’ll be thankful if we leave you alive.”

  Kirk watched the confrontation. He didn’t have to hear what was going on to understand. One of the men walked up to the old man and sent him to his knees with a blow from the butt of his long gun. The black man tried to grab the gun of the man next to him. They struggled for a few seconds until the man who hit the old man mashed the butt of his gun into the black man’s head. The black man fell. Three of the bandits gathered up the women and led them back by the truck. The young man tried to fight back when the one of the bandits grabbed the young redheaded girl. The bandits proceeded to kick the shit out of the kid. The dog attacked the bandits beating up the kid. One of the bandits shot the dog in the side. It yelped and ran off to the bushes. The bandit threw the young girl to the pavement hard. Kirk knew how this would end.

  “Fuck.” He muttered to himself. He just wanted to be left alone, not get caught up in someone else’s trouble. Too late now. He thought to himself. He couldn’t watch them hurt the girl. Time to move. He lowered his rifle and began to run at a crouch, trying to stay below the level of the field grass. With any luck, the bandits would be preoccupied with their new prizes and wouldn’t notice a dark lump of grass moving their way. He dropped to the ground and low crawled when he got within a hundred and fifty yards of the road. He crawled for another seventy-five yards.

  He popped up on one knee, using the other to brace his arm as he looked through the scope. The group hadn’t seen him. One of the bandits held a gun on the three men lying, bleeding in the road. Another guarded the women as the other three men pinned the black girl over the hood of the truck. She fought, but after a few blows to the head, she settled down. The black man tried to get up, but the guard kicked him in the head.

  Who to hit first? Kirk asked himself. He had a ten round clip and one in the chamber, two shots per man with one to spare. Should he take out the aspiring rapists first? They stood closest to cover but furthest from the captives. It was risky. He might hit the dark girl.

  He could take out the guards first and hope the captives could fight back. Why are they keeping guards on the men and other women anyway? Seemed like a liability to Kirk. He expected that they would have shot the men, not tried to hold them. Maybe they had a use for captives that Kirk hadn’t thought of? Maybe these were just amateur thugs who didn’t know what in the hell they were doing? “Screw it.” He said to himself. He took a deep breath, let it out about half way, paused, and gently squeezed the trigger.

  The bandit behind the bent over black woman had just pulled down her pants while the other two held her arms and shoulders pinned to the truck hood. His blue du rag fell off as he unbuckled his belt. He was about to start when the one hundred and ninety grain hollow point bullet excavated the contents of his ribcage.

  Kirk swung to his left. The man guarding the men looked toward the truck in confusion. The rifle roared again. Kirk had rushed his shot and hit a little low. He saw the man double over and fall. The beauty of such a high powered rifle was that it produced so much shock, that anything close to a vital hit proved fatal.

  Kick swung back to his right. The two men who had held the girl had taken cover behind the truck. One of them crouched behind it. The other jumped in the bed. The dark girl fell to the ground, trying to pull up her pants and crawl away from the truck at the same time. The man who had been guarding the remaining women turned to run for the truck as well. Kirk’s third shot went high and took the man in the arm. He spun and fell, his weapon bouncing away on the road.

  Kirk jumped to his feet and ran toward the truck. He figured he would take out the man in the back of the truck first and then deal with one behind. He didn’t know exactly where either man was so he fired a shot into the bed of the truck before he came up and braced his back against the driver’s side wheel well. He heard movement from the bed of the truck at the same time he heard a scuffling come from the other side of the truck. Stupid! He cursed at himself as he spun to face the man coming across the front of the truck. He turned just enough to see the man had him, his pistol pointed at Kirk’s head. He didn’t fear dying. In a way, it would be a releas
e. The strongest emotion in him at that moment was anger. Anger at himself for being so stupid. Anger for what they would do to the little redheaded girl, when he died.

  Four quick pops rang out in front of the truck. The bandit who aimed the pistol at Kirk twitched and fell to the ground shaking. Kirk looked to where the shots had come from. The tall black man held a ridiculously small pistol. His eye was swollen shut from the beating he had taken earlier. He locked eyes with Kirk and nodded.

  Kirk spun around as the man in the back of the truck stood up with his hands in the air. “I give up man! I give up! We were only just messing around!”

  Kirk stepped up to the man, grabbed him by the front of his shirt, and hauled him out of the truck bed. The bandit hit the ground hard on his back. Kirk wasted no time slinging his rifle and pulling out a piece of five-fifty cord from one of his pants pockets. He rolled the stunned man over and tied his wrists together. He searched the man and found only a pocket knife. He grabbed the man by the hair, dragged him to the other side of the truck, and slammed him into the passenger’s side door, propping him up on his knees. “Please don’t kill me, man! We weren’t actually going to hurt anyone!” The man pleaded.

  Kirk looked back to where the group congregated around the older gentlemen. They would be ok. A few bruises and scrapes, but nothing they couldn’t get over. The thug that Kirk had nicked in the arm tried to crawl away. Kirk walked over and kicked the man in the ribs. When he turned over, Kirk thought better of his shot. The man’s right arm was a bloody mass of ruin just above his elbow. Kirk wondered how the limb hadn’t been blown off. The bullet had hit the bone and exploded. The man was bleeding out fast. Kirk pulled another piece of rope and tied a tourniquet around his upper arm. The man cried out in pain as Kirk cinched down on the rope. He was still a dead man. Kirk didn’t need him to die just yet.

  He grabbed the man by the hair, dragged him over to face his companion leaning against the truck. He jerked the man to his knees. Kirk leaned down by the man so that their heads were side by side. He looked at the man leaning against the truck. “Listen good, asshole. I’m going to ask you a few questions. The quicker and better you respond, the better your day gets. Understand?”

  “Fuck you!” The man said between gritted teeth.

  “Wrong.” Kirk said as he pulled a combat knife from the horizontal sheath strapped to his belt. Kirk grabbed the man around the neck with his left arm. He dug the point of the knife into the man’s good shoulder. The more the man fought and screamed, the deeper Kirk’s knife went.

  When the man quit screaming, Kirk asked. “How many men are in your group?” Kirk turned his head as he heard movement. The older gentleman had broken away from the group and was stepped toward him.

  “You can’t do this, mother fucker!” The bleeding man said. “I have rights! You can’t just torture someone!”

  The older gentleman stopped a few feet short of Kirk and the bleeding bandit. Kirk looked up at the man and told his prisoner. “You got one more chance to tell me how many men are in your group and where they are.”

  “I said fuck you, dipshit. What you’re doing is wrong. I’m gonna get a lawyer and sue the fuck out of you when this is all over!”

  This asshole can’t be serious! Kirk thought. Given the situation, no one could say something that damned stupid. Kirk turned from the older gentleman and looked back at the bandit still tied and leaning against the truck. “Son, you must be some kind of special stupid to say something like that.” The bleeding man started to say something, but Kirk covered his mouth before he could begin. “I tell you what, dumbass. Hell’s full of lawyers. Have yours call me when you get there.” Kirk jabbed his knife into the man’s neck at a downward angle just above his collar bone and tore it up, back, and out of the man’s neck. He pushed the bandit forward on his stomach as he let go, leaving the man to bleed out in front of the other bandit.

  The older gentleman from the group took a step back, and Kirk heard the women in the group gasp as they turned away. The remaining bandit began crying and babbling, snot and dribble spewing form his mouth. Kirk walked over and leaned down to stare the man in the face. “Your turn. How many men are in your group and where are they?”

  Kirk stepped back and looked down at the man. A darkening circle of piss emanated from his crotch. “I don’t know, man. I don’t know!”

  “Think… Think very hard. Your life depends on it.”

  “There’s twenty or so of us… We live out at the Smith’s old farm place, east of town.”

  “What town?” Kirk asked, examining the bloody blade of his knife.

  The bandit’s eyes grew wider, much like the wet spot on his pants. “Gibson City, man! Gibson City!”

  “And what are you doing out here on the roads?”

  “We’re just scavenging, mister. That’s all we’re doing. Trying to find food or supplies. Things have been pretty rough in town. We had a group of folks come through and try to take our food. We got tired of people coming and begging or stealing so we got together and started taking from the folks headed into town. We’d steal whatever they had and run them off. We weren’t looking for any trouble. Just protecting ourselves. I swear!”

  Kirk looked down at the man and nodded. The bandit seemed to relax a little, taking Kirk’s nod as acceptance. “How many trucks and bikes do you have? How much gas?”

  “We got about three trucks and ten bikes, but we don’t got much gas. We’re running low.”

  Kirk paused and looked the man. He stepped over and leaned down, looking the man in the eyes.

  “Are….are you gonna let me go, mister? I swear, we won’t make any more trouble. We’ll keep to ourselves and…” He trailed off as Kirk smiled at him. The bandit was locked into Kirk’s dark green eyes. He started to cry again as the knife slid underneath his sternum, tearing through his diaphragm, and piecing his heart. He tried to scream, tried to get free, tried to do anything, but his body refused.

  Kirk wiped his knife clean on the dead man’s shirt and stood up. He sheathed his knife and turned to face the group. The tall black man and the older gentleman had recovered their weapons and moved in front of the women. Even the teenage boy, still bleeding from his nose, stood between Kirk and the women. He couldn’t blame them. They had the shit kicked out of them, almost killed, and almost forced to watch one of their women get raped. No, a solitary man, even one who had just saved their lives, wouldn’t be welcome.

  Kirk addresses the older man since he seemed to be the one in charge. “Where you folks heading?”

  “South, to stay with my brother.” The older man said.

  “You guys look ok. Maybe a little shaken up, but you’ll be ok in a few days. I’d suggest you get going wherever it is you’re going. You heard the man. If he told the truth, and I think he did, there’s fourteen or so more of these scumbags roaming around pretty close to here. Don’t know how many resources they have, but if they have the gas, they may come looking for these guys. I suggest you not be here when they do.” The older man nodded.

  “One more thing,” Kirk said. “Stay off of the goddamned roads. They may be the easiest way to travel, but they’re also the easiest way for these shitbags to get around too. Like he said, they were looking for refugees from the city or a random passerby to steal from. They look on the roads because they know that’s where most folks will be.”

  Kirk looked up to the tall black man and nodded. “Thank you friend.” Kirk said as he turned away from the group.

  “Why?” The older man asked.

  “Why what?” Kirk asked over his shoulder.

  “Why did you kill him? He was tied up and no longer a threat. You could have let him live?”

  Kirk turned around and looked the older man in the eye. “He deserved it.”

  The older man studied him for a moment. He nodded. “Why save us?”

  Kirk glanced behind the old man at the young redheaded girl. The old man noticed, but Kirk didn’t care. Let him think what he wo
uld. He looked back at the older man. “Maybe you deserved it.”

  Kirk felt this would end the conversation. The older man relaxed his grip on the gun and stepped forward, extending a hand. “My name’s Scott.”

  Kirk looked down at the hand for a second before he grabbed it. “Kirk.”

  “Well, Kirk, thank you for saving me and my family. Where are you headed?”

  “Just travelling.” Kirk said.

  “Where to?”

  “Just traveling.”

  “Well, Kirk, if you don’t have anywhere to go. You’re welcome to come with us.”

  “Scott, don’t you think we should discuss this?” The older woman in the group said. Kirk assumed from her tone and age that she was Scott’s wife.

  “No.” Scott answered back. He knew he’d pay for that later.

  Kirk looked Scott over for a minute before taking a good look at the rest of the group. His eyes lingered on the young girl. She shrank away under his gaze. Scott noticed as well, apprehension settled on his face. Kirk realized that they didn’t really want him. The old man did this out some misplaced sense of gratitude or hope that Kirk would provide them with protection or supplies. He looked at Scott. He had no plans. “Yeah, I’ll help you along on your trip for a little while.” The apprehension remained on Scott’s face.

  The family covered a little over three miles before they stopped to make camp about an hour before sunset. They set up camp in a copse of trees next to a small stream on the edge of two fields. Scott told the teenagers to go gather wood for a fire. Jimmy and Lucy walked off and began picking up sticks. Kirk sat and watched the family work. He was amazed they had made it this far. He found their gear pathetic. Their food was fading fast. They lived off of one meal a day. They would never be able to survive, much less keep up a good pace, with so little food and so far to go.

  Kirk hadn’t talked much on their journey that afternoon. Scott had introduced the entire family, but Clay and Scott were the only ones who dared talk to him. Most of their conversation centered on the hike. Kirk had helped plan their route and discussed how they should proceed. The men seemed reluctant to ask him anything personal, although Kirk knew they were curious. Kirk drank the rest of the water in his canteen and walked down to the stream to refill it and wash the paint from his face. On his way back to camp, he fished out one of his iodine pills, slipped one into the canteen, and shook it. He knelt down next to his pack and watched. Some of the family saw him not making any preparations for camp and gave him curious looks, too afraid to look at him with outright displeasure.