The Hummer would go west. The Dodge and the Mustang would continue north, toward Wichita Falls.
Everything went according to plan at first.
The Hummer turned left. Within ten minutes, Carter radioed them. “Can’t see the horses, but a pickup is behind us now. It’s keeping a fair distance.”
“We’re on our way,” Bianca said.
Max navigated a U-turn across cracked asphalt stuffed with weeds and a crumbling guardrail that stood sentinel over a small creek.
He led the way, with Patrick nearly on his bumper. They didn’t bother to slow down and scope out the path. They were only a few miles north of the section where Gabe had turned west.
They followed the road and soon caught sight of the pickup.
“Carter is driving,” Gabe said over the radio. “We’re going to stop at the top of the rise, and I’ll jump out with my weapon pointed toward the truck. I want you a half mile back.”
Bianca and Shelby radioed that they understood.
It was a good plan, but Max had a hard time shaking the bad feeling that settled in his gut when he spotted the circled X spray painted on the tailgate of the truck trailing the Hummer.
He realized they were in trouble when another vehicle pulled in behind the Mustang, and he could see in the distance, in front of the Hummer, a large flatbed truck stop mere inches from where Gabe was standing.
Lanh was out of the Hummer, back to back with Gabe. He had his weapon pointed at the flatbed, and Gabe kept his weapon pointed at the truck to their rear, which had pulled off the road in a flanking position. Carter remained behind the wheel of the Hummer. No doubt Gabe had told him to stay there and run over anything or anyone who threatened them.
Max halted the Dodge at an angle across both lanes of the road, and Patrick did the same, creating a two-sided box of shelter where Max, Patrick, Shelby, and Bianca could spread out in a line, two facing the Hummer and two facing the Volkswagen bus coming to a stop in the road behind them. For a moment, Max thought they’d arrived at a standoff, but then he glimpsed the two men on horses emerging from the brush to the south, rifles raised, and he knew that they had been outmaneuvered.
He was nearly overpowered by the urge to empty the twenty-round magazine in his M16, but as his finger crept to the trigger, Shelby said, “Don’t.”
She was staring toward Gabe, and Max realized everyone else had already dropped their weapons.
“Pretty smart, Mamma-jamma.” This from a boy who didn’t yet have facial hair. Short and thin and incredibly dirty, he approached from the truck that had flanked the Hummer. “Wouldn’t want a bloodbath. You all look like a nice little family. Very multicultural.” He reached out with the muzzle of his gun and scooped up Bianca’s hair.
Max dropped his weapon.
They were herded into a circle and told to sit facing outward.
When it was clear they’d been neutralized, Hugo stepped from the passenger seat of the flatbed. There was no questioning who he was. For one thing, he had an X inside a circle tattooed on his forehead. His long hair was pulled back with a leather strap. Tattoos snaked up and down his neck and over the backs of his hands. He was tall and gangly, and he had a bad case of acne down both sides of his face.
He silently walked up and down, giving them a quick once-over and focusing most of his attention on the vehicles. One of the men on horseback tossed his reins to the other, and then he confirmed that each vehicle still had the keys in the ignition. When Hugo reached the Hummer, a smile broke out across his face. “Looks like it’s my lucky day.”
“It will be if you walk away now.”
Hugo froze for a moment, hands lifted as if he was about to lay them on the Hummer and bless it. Instead he turned, walked over to their group, and squatted in front of Gabe.
“You talk big for a man who has been disarmed and is now sitting on his hands.”
“I thought you deserved a fair warning.”
“Oh! My man has nerves of steel.” He leaned in closer.
Max could see that Hugo had his face right up to Gabe’s, and he was sure that Gabe would head butt him. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, and he focused on his rifle leaning against the front of the Dodge. He was planning how he’d plow through the goon standing in front of him, snatch the rifle, and get off a few rounds when the stillness of the afternoon was broken by a shout and then a clicking that bizarrely reminded him of a camera stuck on automatic.
Gabe shouted a warning and threw himself on top of Bianca, who was seated to his left. Max saw something cross Hugo’s face—alarm or irritation or fear. And then a rocket hit the flatbed truck, sending it careening toward the side of the road.
EIGHTEEN
Carter’s ears felt plugged with cotton.
He could make out random words, but they wouldn’t string together correctly.
AT-4 rocket
Move those…
Go. Go. Now!
He’s bleeding.
There were other sounds as well. Fire crackling. Vehicles peeling away. Someone screaming his name. A mockingbird calling out.
He pushed up from the ground into a sitting position and tried to take in a scene that made no sense. The flatbed truck was a pile of flames and smoking metal. The Hummer was gone. Lanh was holding his shoulder. Blood was oozing between his fingers running down his arm. Bianca stood and stumbled toward Lanh. Max was checking on Carter’s mom. Patrick had jogged down the road and stopped in the middle. He pulled up the rifle, sighted in one of the fleeing vehicles, and pulled the trigger.
The tat-a-tat of the weapon brought Carter back to his senses. Everything came together—the ambush and Hugo and Gabe about to be killed.
He jumped up, vaguely aware that he was still wearing his pack, and ran toward Lanh.
Bianca didn’t turn to look at him, but she said, “Pull the med kit out of my pack, Carter.”
“What happened?”
“A piece of the flatbed hit me.” Lanh’s eyes were open wide, his pupils darting left to right, left to right. His skin had taken on a shiny pallor.
“Not a bullet?”
“Nothing as cool as that.”
“Just as dangerous,” Bianca said. “Unless we manage to stop this bleeding.”
“We need to go,” Gabe hollered as he jogged over to where they were.
“I’m bandaging it—”
“No time. Hugo and his goons are going to circle back.”
Carter realized that his mom and Max were also hurrying in their direction.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine. It’s Lanh who was hurt.” He saw then that she had a scrape across her forehead and blood had dripped down the side of her face. Max had wrapped a rag around his left hand, but it was soaked through with blood. He shook his head once quickly when he saw Carter staring.
So they were fine, but bruised and battered.
Off to the side, holding what looked like a shoulder rocket launcher, was a large, burly man with wild red hair and a beard that covered most of his face.
Gabe reached past the med kit, pulled out the duct tape, and wrapped it quickly and tightly around Lanh’s left arm.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“No.”
“You’re sure you can walk?”
“Yeah.”
“All right. Carter stay on his right side.”
Patrick took Gabe’s place on Lanh’s left, and they maintained a tight group of three as they all rushed into the woods. Maybe Gabe was afraid Lanh was going to faint from the loss of blood. It was plain that his legs worked fine, but he still had that shiny look to his skin, and his eyes continued to dart back and forth.
Gabe rushed ahead and was saying something to the redheaded man. Carter couldn’t make out what it was, though. He could only hear his heart hammering and their feet pounding against the dirt and the sound of branches bending for them and slapping back too quickly as they pushed through. It seemed they’d been running for an
eternity, but it had probably only been ten minutes. Gabe stopped, held up his hand, and they all listened. Carter tried to will his heart to beat more quietly, but it was no use. All he could hear was the thundering of his pulse and his own labored breathing.
They were standing in a knot now. Gabe next to the stranger. Carter’s mom and Max on his right. Bianca and Patrick to Lanh’s left.
Carter’s mind had caught up with what happened. They’d been ambushed. Outplayed. Robbed. Rescued? He felt the weight of his pack on his back, saw his mother glance at it and smile tightly. She reached out and squeezed his arm, but she didn’t need to say it. He understood well enough.
If it hadn’t been for Gabe, that pack would be in the backseat of the Hummer right now, headed to who-knew-where. Carter had thought it kind of stupid, even a tad dramatic, when Gabe insisted they carry their packs with them everywhere. He’d thought maybe the kind old guy he knew as the doctor next door was feeling the effects of too much strain. Now he understood that Gabe was seeing the world as it was. Carter had been looking at the world as he hoped it would be.
And his survival lay in the difference.
“Where are we going?” Gabe asked the big guy.
“Gustav Jacobsen. Folks call me Gus.” They shook hands, and Gus nodded at the rest of the group. “We need to keep going. Hugo will be back—sooner rather than later.”
“You have a camp near here?”
“A few more miles.”
“How’d you happen—”
Gus cut him off. “I understand why you wouldn’t trust me, but I did save you back there. Now you can stay here, have a meeting or whatever, and decide what you’re going to do. But I’m headed back to the compound.”
Carter’s mom started to speak, but he held up his hands and stopped her. “Don’t mean to be rude, ma’am. We have enough time to make it back before dark if we leave now. Being out here at night with Hugo on our scent? That’s not something I care to do. If we survive this, I’d be happy to listen to what you have to say.”
With a nod, the giant of a man took off across the open field.
“Not much shelter here,” Max said.
“The woods we came through might throw them off…” Bianca had her hands on her knees and was pulling in deep breaths.
It made Carter feel better to see that he wasn’t the only one winded and struggling to keep up.
“We crashed through those woods like a bear intent on protecting its cub,” Patrick said.
“Even a fool like Hugo could follow our trail.” Gabe looked directly at Lanh. “Can you keep going?”
“Yeah. I’m good.”
Everyone muttered words of agreement. Carter even felt his own head bobbing. Then Gabe led them after the big guy, Gus, toward a compound, into the middle of somewhere else. But away from Hugo, and that was good.
NINETEEN
There was very little light left when they reached the compound. It was a semi-circle of RVs backed up against an embankment that overlooked the Brazos River. The river was broad and surprisingly swollen, owing to recent rains. The cliffs were somewhat steep—another thing Shelby didn’t expect south of Wichita Falls, but then the terrain was hilly here, and the river had cut a path. The rust-colored dirt reminded her of the Red River that they were so desperate to find a way across. But first it seemed they would cross the Brazos, headed back the wrong direction.
The RVs were a tan color rather than the sparkling white Shelby had always seen as they traveled through Abney coming down Highway 281. With the way the RVs were positioned against the backdrop of Texas dirt and the little bit of light peeking through the trees, the result was that they were practically invisible.
“How did you get the RVs here?” Shelby asked.
Gus had slowed down and waited for them once they were within sight of the compound. She would never have found it if she’d been looking for it. A stand of trees higher up the bank blocked it from above, and below was only the river, which had no activity on it. At the moment, they were standing across the river from the compound, which brought up a whole other set of questions.
“Surely they weren’t here already. How did you…”
Gus grinned, revealing dazzling white, perfectly straight teeth. For some reason, Shelby was surprised, and then she was embarrassed that she’d expected him to have tobacco-stained teeth where they weren’t missing. In spite of the people she’d met since the flare—the frightening-looking ones who had helped them and the normal-looking ones who had nearly killed them—she was still sorting people into stereotypes by their appearance. Maybe that was just what humans did.
“Everyone in our group is an amateur survivalist.”
“Amateur?”
“They didn’t build bunkers, but…” He waved toward the RVs as though the rest was self-explanatory.
To Shelby, none of what she was seeing made sense. Unfortunately, she didn’t have time to ask more questions. Everyone was standing in a group, once again catching their breath, but it was obvious Gus was ready to move on. For a big guy, he hiked across the fields and through the woods with remarkable ease.
He pulled his fingers through his beard and stepped out from the stand of trees where they were regrouping. Standing in the open with his legs spread apart, he waved his arms back and forth over his head, causing him to look like a giant X.
“Tell me Gus has a plan,” Max said as he passed her a bottle of water.
She noticed that the rag wrapped around his hand was stained red through and through, but it was dried blood.
“That needs to be disinfected,” she said.
“Later.”
Two whistles answered Gus’s pantomime, and then a long canoe nosed out of a cove filled with reeds as two people began to row toward them.
“Best get going. Boys don’t like to wait.” Gus stepped back into the trees and began to pick his way down the steep bank.
“Are we actually going over there?” Carter asked.
“Yeah, we are.” Gabe had been relatively quiet on the trek to the compound. His eyes were like ice, and his expression was completely unreadable. Shelby assumed he was still fighting his anger. Either that, or he thought they were in serious trouble and didn’t want to scare everyone. She was hoping for the former.
Lanh once again assured Bianca he was okay.
Max brought up the rear.
They reached the canoe and found it was two boys who had paddled over. They were all hands and feet, and Shelby guessed they were sixteen years old—at the most. Obviously, they were experienced with the canoe. They held it steady while Bianca and Shelby climbed on board with their packs. There was enough room for Carter and Lanh as well.
“We’ll come back for ya,” the taller of the two said to the rest of the group.
They were halfway across the river when the same boy said, “My name’s Decker. This here is Jack. I guess we’re the welcome committee.”
“Thank you for coming to fetch us,” Bianca said.
“Oh, well, you know. Gus was pretty clear.”
Shelby introduced herself, and the rest in their group did the same.
Decker and Jack were interested in Lanh’s wound. It didn’t take long to tell the story of their ambush and Gus’s rescue.
“He set off the rocket launcher? On Hugo?”
She had the feeling the boys would have high-fived, but they were sitting on opposite ends of the canoe.
“No wonder Gus brought you back,” Decker said.
“Gus never brings no one.”
Shelby resisted the urge to correct Jack’s grammar. Now probably wasn’t the time.
“He feels responsible since he saved ya.” Decker nodded to Jack. “Tie up.”
The boy jumped out of the canoe and tied it to a pier that Shelby hadn’t been able to see from across the river. The wooden structure was covered with reeds and painted the same color as the water. Of course it was. It had been built by amateur survivalists. Maybe to Gus they were amateur,
but to her they seemed like experts. They’d managed to make their compound practically invisible.
Fifteen minutes later, they’d ferried the rest of the group across.
The first order of business was for Gabe to look at Lanh’s arm.
Perhaps having Decker and Jack look on in admiration helped.
Carter joked that at least it was his left arm, and Lanh would still be able to eat fast and shoot straight.
What with all of the attention, Lanh was actually fighting a smile by the time Gabe finished with him.
“Keep it clean, keep it covered, and don’t do anything to rip out those stitches.”
Gabe actually had small vials of antibiotics in his pack, and he injected one into Lanh’s other arm.
“Thanks. Now they both hurt.”
“You’ll live.” But Gabe’s tough words were softened by the look he gave the boy.
Only he wasn’t a boy. Shelby had to remind herself that he’d turned twenty-one a few months ago. Both he and Carter were men, so why did she still feel like it was her responsibility to protect them?
Next, Gabe cleaned up Max’s hand, which required a butterfly stitch across the outside and below his pinky finger. Last, he poured hydrogen peroxide on a rag and began to wipe Shelby’s forehead. “You don’t need stitches, but you do need to keep it clean.”
She nodded, though she felt incredibly stupid a few minutes later with a Band-Aid across her forehead.
“Is Lanh’s arm a problem?” Shelby squatted next to Gabe, helping him repack, and the tops of their heads were almost touching.
Gabe stopped to rub the fingers of his right hand against his forehead.
When he glanced at Shelby, she could practically see the guilt and weariness rolling off him.
“Shouldn’t be doing triage…not here, not like this.”
“But this is our life.” She shrugged as she sat back on her heels. “I would think you would be used to it by now.”
“Even in Austin, I mainly worked with the military. I hated to see anyone injured, but we volunteered to serve. We understood the risk. That’s not true of civilians. Lanh and Carter, Decker and Jack…even you.”
Light of Dawn Page 8