by J. L. Bourne
I pulled my binos and glassed the checkpoint, taking note of who was down there, how they were armed, and with what. There was one guy dressed in military fatigues carrying what looked like an M16. I obviously couldn’t see the selector switch from that far away, but it didn’t matter. The other three men carried pistols on their hips, but one of them also carried a longbow. Not a compound bow, but an honest-to-goodness British-style longbow. Not high tech or modern, but it could still put the hurt on you from farther away than one might imagine.
The water was high and very cold, making expedient crossing on foot without the bridge a no-go. I could try to head up- or downstream to see if there was another way across, but the very presence of the checkpoint told me that these men had the monopoly on river crossing for what was probably miles in both directions. I couldn’t stay here forever, and this bridge stood between Elkins and me, and Elkins was what separated my cousin Jim and me in Black Oak.
I decided the best course of action was to just ask, so I did.
I tightened my pack straps and headed back down to the road. I made sure the MP5K was chambered and that the safety was off. Back on pavement, I walked around the bend in clear view of the checkpoint and waved my arms. The guy with the M16 screamed for me to freeze, so I complied. I couldn’t hear what the M16 guy was saying to his buddy, but it looked liked he was sending him to me.
My heart rate increased steadily as the man approached. When he got to within fifty yards he drew his handgun, but kept it low. I raised my hands but kept them at chest level. If this guy was even halfway good with a pistol, I’d be dead before I could pull the sub gun from under my coat. Calculated risk.
You should have just sniped them from the hill, I told myself.
No. You’re not a fucking murderer.
The man stopped at about ten yards. “State your business, stranger,” he said firmly.
“Just want to cross the bridge; my family is somewhere on the other side,” I responded.
“You armed?”
“Yeah.”
“What else you got in there?”
“Listen, this ain’t worth my trouble. I’ll just find another way across,” I said to the bridge troll.
“Well, this is the only way across for ten miles on either side. We ain’t shakin’ people down, mister, but the Feds have been creeping into this territory looking for people. We’re runnin’ low on ammunition. Pretty soon, they’ll be able to just walk across the bridge without any thought of us shootin’ back.”
“I hear what you’re saying, but can we make a deal here, or do I need to talk to the guy with the M16?” I said.
“No, I’m his right hand. I can speak for the group. What are you offerin’?”
“The best I can do is a half a mag of 5.56 for your boss’s rifle in exchange for safe passage.”
I left a little negotiating room just in case they demanded a full mag, but if they wanted more or if they tried anything stupid, I’d dump everything I had into them and leave them bleeding out as I walked over their bodies to the other side.
The man looked at me for a long while before replying.
“Okay, you got yourself a deal. Put the ammo in your ball cap and approach the checkpoint. Don’t have anything in your hands except the hat with the ammo, you got it?
“Okay,” I said flatly.
I quickly removed the rain cover, grabbed a full mag, and began thumbing rounds into my ball cap.
Sixteen, just to leave no doubt.
I got situated and approached the checkpoint slowly and deliberately, keeping the man ten yards ahead of me. I kept the ball cap with the ammo in my left hand, just in case I needed to reach for the sub gun.
As I approached, guns left holsters and the boss’s M16 was brought up into high ready.
I stopped.
“Hey, I mean you no harm. An agreement was made with your guy here. I just want to cross,” I said.
“He’s right. We have a deal,” the right-hand man added.
The boss signaled for the others to holster their guns, but he kept his own rifle high. I began to move again.
At the checkpoint, I approached the man with the M16 and said, “Here’s your half a mag of 5.56, as agreed; now please let me pass.”
The bossman approached slowly and looked me in the eyes; his facial expressions immediately revealed recognition. He didn’t have to say a damn word. He looked down into my hat and grabbed the ammunition, and then quickly pulled the magazine from his M16, frantically feeding rounds into it.
He was empty the whole time.
I walked past him with my hands still open and continued across the bridge, walking backwards with my eyes on the M16. He slammed the mag into the gun and racked the bolt back, feeding a round into the chamber.
I jogged backwards and pulled the MP5K, nearly falling on my ass from the weight of the backpack and the awkwardness of trying to run backwards with it.
“Don’t fucking try it!” I screamed.
The bossman raised his weapon at me as I unfolded the stock on my sub gun. I took aim through the diopter sight and squeezed the trigger, tagging the man in the shoulder. My ears rang, but I could somehow hear his M16 clank against the concrete at his feet and the thud of his body as he hit the ground, screaming in agony. I turned and ran across the bridge, noticing the road spikes on the other side. Guess they didn’t have enough people to staff both ends of their checkpoint.
Oddly, I didn’t hear any pistol fire coming at me, and I was about to turn to see what was going on when it nearly knocked me off my feet.
THWAP! was the sound I heard as the arrow hit my pack. The impact caused me to stagger for a few steps before I finally realized what happened. I kept moving, not wanting to find out the firing rate of the man’s longbow. A hundred yards past the other side of the bridge, I broke off into the woods, sixteen rounds of 5.56 and one round of 9mm poorer.
Safe inside the cover of thick Arkansas pines and oaks, I dropped my pack to see what happened. The arrow impacted fairly hard, hitting the stock and buffer tube of my M4. Aside from some cosmetic damage to the polymer stock and a small dent in the aluminum buffer tube, all was good. The gun was still functional, but I had a nice hole in my rain cover. Fuckers.
I didn’t kill anyone today, and I made it across the bridge without shooting all my ammo. In hindsight, I think I should have smoked them from the hilltop, but luck was on my side for the time being.
—————
After sorting out the arrow situation, I referenced my compass and kept moving through the thick foliage and thorns common in these parts. After half an hour or so, I hit an opening in the dense growth and spilled out onto what I was pretty sure was Highway 16. The road was clear going in both directions, giving me time to make the choice.
Do I go west past Pizza Junction to Shoffner’s Corner in order to get home, or east through Elkins and Sulphur City? West put me closer to Fayetteville than I’d liked, but East was a bit farther.
Reluctantly, I tightened my pack straps and moved east in the direction of Elkins, a place I knew well ten years ago. Highway 16 was dotted with vast fields, farms, and the occasional home that butted right up to the road, built in the days that horses pulled carriages.
It was close to sunset when I came upon Elkins High School on my right.
The place looked as if it had been shut down for years. Grass grew tall up between the cracks in the sidewalk, and three startled deer jumped and sprinted away from me past the entrance to the hangar-shaped gymnasium. There was no sign of anyone on the campus and I needed a place to bed down for the night. I followed the direction the deer sprinted through the overgrown courtyard that once bustled with students moving back and forth between buildings. The school looked like a large hotel from here, with the doors to the classrooms facing me from both sides. I saw one of the whitetails jump a low chain link fence up ahead, so I kept moving in that general direction. With half the row of classroom doors behind me, I closed the distan
ce to get to the field ahead. I could now see the goal posts and scoreboard being overtaken by mold and other signs of neglect.
Shattering glass behind me caused me to dive for the dirt. I concentrated, listening for any other signs of movement. I heard more rustling around coming from inside one of the classrooms I’d just passed. I parted the grass in front of me, providing a better view of the doors.
I sat there, watching, waiting, until a bear cub came stumbling out of one of the open classroom doors. I froze in terror, realizing that I only had the HK 9mm readily accessible, and that my M4 would cost me time and noise to retrieve. I slowly reached for the HK and gripped it tightly as another cub stepped out of the classroom and into the muddy courtyard. Apparently all those stories about bears sleeping the whole winter are bullshit.
I froze, staying to gauge the wind direction from the way the tall reeds of grass were swaying.
The classroom doorway darkened halfway just before Mama Bear came walking out. Just as soon as she stepped into the courtyard, she craned her massive head upward and began to sniff. She tensed, swiveling hear head from side to side, scanning her surroundings.
She looked right at me for a moment, prompting immediate flashbacks of wrestling the mountain lion. I didn’t move a follicle and just averted my eyes away from hers.
She growled.
I was about to get up and start sprinting for my life just before I saw her swat one of her cub’s on its hind end, prompting it to get back inside the classroom. The second cub followed its sibling and Mama Bear followed them both back inside.
Maybe it was the deer smell that woke them up, or maybe it was me. Either way, I decided to take the long way around on my way back to the gymnasium. There was nowhere to run or climb in this little kill box the bears called home. I crawled for fifty feet or so before I had the balls to get up and crouch to the field where the deer escaped.
The field was in pretty bad shape. Only the bleachers, goal posts, and scoreboard signified that football used to be played here. The derelict scoreboard indicated that the Elks were losing 13–21. I walked around the perimeter and under the bleachers, finding nothing that I could use. As the sun dipped below the trees, I pulled out my NVD and climbed to the top of the bleachers. With the MP5K still slung across my chest, I fished the M4 out of my bag, checking the silencer to make sure it was still securely attached.
I waited. The cold aluminum sapped the heat from my body and I began to shiver. I sat on my pack for a while and just kept my eyes trained on the football field through the NVD. After about an hour, I could see the eyes of a rabbit moving through the grass. I brought my M4 up and adjusted the red dot to the lowest setting. The green dot hovered over the rabbit’s head. I took a deep breath and exhaled.
Squeezing the trigger, the round thumped from my suppressed carbine and the supersonic crack of the 5.56 bullet followed. The rabbit spun before hitting the ground. I rushed down the bleachers, trying not to fall, as my legs were frozen and numb. Jumping the bottom handrail, I landed in the grass and ran to the rabbit, hoping it was dead. The pain in my leg was barely present, just enough to remind me of the traumatic hand-to-paw bout with the mountain lion.
As I approached the rabbit, I could see that the shot was a clean kill and I was thankful that I didn’t have to take a deer instead. It would have been pretty damn wasteful, as I’d have to leave most of it here. I’d have probably dragged it near Mama Bear’s den, but still, the rabbit made more sense and I was lucky to have it. I took it by the ears, grabbed my kit, and headed back to the gym, again taking the long way around, as I had no desire to confront an Arkansas black bear at night protecting her cubs.
—————
I cautiously approached the Elkins High School gymnasium. There was no sign of anyone around me, but I could see a faint flickering light far across the road opposite the high school on the elementary school side. It couldn’t be brighter than a candle, and was invisible to the night-adjusted naked eye. I checked my light discipline to make sure I didn’t have a flashlight on anywhere and crossed the gravel walkway to the front of the gym. The doors were chained shut and the glass was still intact, even though it looked like someone tried to work it over with a baseball bat at the glass panel just to the right of the door. I had three padlock shims in my pack, so I fished around for those for a few minutes until I found them.
“Work the lock,” I whispered to myself, hoping that twin Doberman pinschers wouldn’t appear out of nowhere. I must have been getting rusty, because the huge brass lock that held the chains around the door handles wasn’t going to give in for me tonight. Defeated, I shoved the shims back into my pack and looked for another way inside.
I walked around the parking lot side of the gym, keeping an eye on the flickering light in the window of the elementary school three hundred yards away across the street. I reached the back of the gym and navigated through a maze of old school bus tires and dilapidated gym equipment. Approaching the back door, I turned the knob. Locked. So again I reached into my pack for the lockpick set. I’d long ago replaced some of the raking tools with modified hacksaw blades. Very few original picks remained. After a few minutes of raking the lock, I got frustrated and tried a couple of bump keys, and was finally able to gain entry. Glad the lock was older than I was, as the newer ones could not be bumped.
I slowly entered, listening for any signs of life, human or otherwise. A twig snapped somewhere outside, causing me to involuntarily close the door and lock it behind me. I was committed.
I stepped through some curtains and stage props before climbing a short set of stairs that spilled out onto a small wooden stage. I scanned the dark gym through my NVD, looking for threats, before stepping off the stage onto the basketball court. Championship banners circled the gymnasium’s high walls, some ancient, some more recent. As I followed them around the perimeter, I saw the mascot, a massive stuffed elk’s head. It seemed to look majestically down onto the bleachers, as if deciding whether or not the fans were worthy enough to watch. I didn’t like it; the eyes appeared black through my NVD and seemed to follow me around the gym. I climbed up the steps to the bleachers, noting that they were old and made of wood instead of the more modern aluminum design. With no signs of anything amiss, I did a perimeter sweep of the rest of the gym.
My final stop was the coaches’ office. I pulled the glass door open and went inside, out of the laserlike gaze of the stuffed elk’s head.
I clicked on my flashlight and raised the NVD off my eye. The office had been hastily ransacked. The small refrigerator door was open, the insides gutted of anything useful. Photos of wives and children hung on the walls above the desks; a banner hung behind the desk in the back that read “Whatever It Takes.” A coatrack in the back concealed another door that led to a staircase. I went inside the small landing and followed the wooden steps up.
Rounding the corner at the top of the stairs, I came out inside a bonus room–type space equipped with desks arranged neatly in rows and a foosball table sitting crooked in the back in front of another door. I approached the teacher’s desk in the front of the classroom and flipped through the papers.
I WILL NOT TALK IN STUDY HALL WITHOUT PERMISSION.
This was written hundreds of times over several sheets of paper in different handwritings.
Study hall.
I checked the door behind the foosball table. It was unlocked and led out onto a fire escape that overlooked the courtyard between ground level classrooms. The ladder was retracted and secured with a flimsy plastic tamper seal. I wouldn’t be using it, as it led down to the ground and not very far from where Mama Bear and her cubs were hanging out for the winter.
As I came back inside, I noticed a cooler sitting under the foosball table. I prayed for warm beer or maybe some soda, but what I found was three full plastic bottles of water with mold growing on the outside.
A whole lot better than nothing.
I decided to make camp in the study hall for the night, so
I unpacked my sleeping bag and made a place to sleep, and then brought out my mess kit to prepare tonight’s rabbit stew. The rabbit didn’t have a lot of meat on its bones, but it was all I had.
After lighting a few candles from my pack, I dumped the tin of number two pencils out onto the teacher’s desk and wiped it out with minimal water. I then filled it up halfway and placed it just over my large can of Sterno fuel using some old books to hold up the corners. I dressed the rabbit quickly and knew that adding the brains and eyeballs to my stew was the best survival option, but I wasn’t quite there yet. I’d save the bugs, brains, and other disgusting shit for when my little cabin gut was gone. No need to get all reality TV just yet.
Piece by piece, I lowered the rabbit meat into the boiling water and then tossed a quarter of a peanut butter energy bar into the mix for a little sugar flavoring. I watched the bar melt and swirl around in my tiny cauldron and set my watch timer for twenty minutes.
—————
I have to say that the rabbit stew was superb. I ate everything in the tin and drank the energy bar broth, trying to ignore the number two pencil seasoning. I normally didn’t mind sleeping in weird places like this, but there was just something unsettling about the upstairs gym classroom and the crazy elk’s head.
I tossed the guts and bones off the fire escape platform into the courtyard below. Maybe the cubs would find them tomorrow.
I secured both doors with zip ties and placed some empty soda cans from the trash at the bottom of the stairs. Should get my attention if someone decided to come to study hall tonight.
My next move is simple. Make it to the storm shelter and locate Jim. I should get there by tomorrow night if I leave early enough and don’t run into too much trouble. There’s one large bridge I’d need to deal with, but what are the odds of another bridge checkpoint armed with a longbow sharpshooter?
Right now, I need to blow out the candles and try to sleep. Tomorrow, I’ll see a lot of miles on foot, with too many of them exposed. My gear is disorganized right now, so I’ll set my alarm a little early and take care of it in the morning. The full stomach of rabbit stew is starting to make my eyes heavy.