Grace Under Fire

by Franklin Horton

Blake nodded enthusiastically.

  “We had a few snacks,” Dylan said.

  "How about something easy this morning?" she said. "We've got cereal."

  She went to a shelf and removed several varieties.

  "Do you have milk?" Dylan asked.

  "Yes, we have milk. It's instant so I have to mix it up, but it tastes just like plain old regular milk."

  The boys decided cereal was fine. Each picked the type they wanted. She mixed up some instant milk in a pitcher, then made the boys their cereal. When she was done she put the remainder of the milk in a dorm fridge and plugged it into a receptacle on the wall that would run it off the main solar.

  For herself she had a protein bar, certain that her body craved protein more than carbs with the healing she was doing. There was an electric kettle on the shelf and she plugged that into the wall, using it to make instant coffee. It wasn't the best coffee she'd ever had but it was close enough. The caffeine perked her up nicely.

  While she ate, she thought. With the children safe, she felt like she needed to go and look for Leslie. She wasn't in top condition but she assumed that if she was armed she could probably take care of herself. She hoped she could. She had never been in a fight in her life, never physically harmed anyone. But that this man would violate her home and terrorize her family made her blood run cold.

  It made her want revenge in a way she’d never experienced before.

  When Teresa finished her breakfast, she took her coffee and stood in front of the wall of guns. Her husband often stood there just like that, a miser admiring his gold.

  Like a lot of women, she enjoyed shooting but didn't share her husband’s obsession. Although she enjoyed knowing how to use guns and how to protect herself, she didn’t salivate over particular weapons the way he did. Right now she saw them purely as tools, and she was trying to pick the right tool for the job. Her biggest concern was that she was still sore from her stitches. Under normal circumstances, not involving her being slit open and sewn back shut, she would have opted for a shotgun. She liked that her aim didn't have to be precise, the sound was terrifying, and buckshot loads could be devastating.

  She was certain that shooting a shotgun in her current condition would be very painful. The push against her shoulder would cause her to tense her abdominal muscles. Things might pull and tear. She was concerned that choosing a weapon that was painful to shoot might even cause her to hesitate. Hesitating might cause her to die, and that was not in the plans.

  Shooting her Glock had not been painful. With a handgun, her arms absorbed most of the recoil. Perhaps her best option would be to choose another handgun to go along with her Glock. She didn't recognize a lot of what was on display. So many of the handguns looked similar to her.

  Most were shiny black automatics with slides. There were a few revolvers and even a few automatics that weren’t black. Still, most of them looked the same to her. Then her eyes fell on the chunky silver revolver. It was a distinctive handgun that she recognized. She'd shot that gun before and it brought a smile to her face.

  It was a Taurus Judge, a revolver that shot .45 Long Colt ammunition as well as .410 shotgun shells. Before Robert had bought the gun he showed her a video on the internet, an advertisement for the weapon. It showed a woman confronted in a parking garage by men whose heads were watermelons. The woman fired on the men and vaporized the watermelons. That commercial intrigued her. Apparently it had intrigued Robert also because it wasn't long before he showed up at home with a shiny new Judge.

  There were also a variety of defensive loads available for the weapon. Some of them were just novelties but Robert enjoyed picking them up to experiment with. The two of them would try them out on various targets on the property, including watermelons. One of Robert's favorite commercial loads for the weapon was a .410 shotgun shell that held a small stack of washers, then a ball bearing, then more washers stacked on top of it. When you shot the round it sliced and diced everything in front of it.

  She picked up the Judge and hefted it in her hand. It felt lethal. It felt substantial. In fact it felt so substantial that she thought it might be equally effective as a bludgeon.

  She had several changes of clothes in the Ready Room but she didn't think she'd find anything as comfortable as the sweatpants she was wearing. Comfort was still critical. Besides guns, the display system also held several tactical vests. Robert shot in his almost daily and he had spent a ridiculous amount of money on both the vest and outfitting it. He also had several less-expensive vests that Teresa and Grace used when they trained in one. They had a ton of pockets and attachments for adding more pockets, pouches, and holsters, empty at the moment. Robert stored them that way so he could set them up for whatever particular training they were doing on a given day.

  Teresa took one of the vests down and slipped it on over her T-shirt. Beneath where she'd found the Judge she found a holster for the weapon. The holster wasn't made for the vest and it took her a moment to find a good way to attach it. She ended up mounting it in a cross draw position.

  She also mounted a collapsible nylon pouch to the vest. Robert called it a dump pouch and used it for empty magazines, water bottles, and whatever else he needed a place to stash. She chose five boxes of the washer and ball bearing loads for the Judge. It wasn’t like that was a massive arsenal. Each box only held five rounds. She dumped the shotgun shells into the dump pouch.

  "Are you going somewhere?" Blake asked. He was standing behind her, eyes wide with concern.

  "I'm going to start a movie for you and Dylan. Then I'm gonna go out and have a little look around. I want to see if I can find Mrs. Brown. She may need our help."

  Blake lunged at her and wrapped his arms around her. Teresa flinched, anticipating the pain of his embrace. When the initial panic was gone she lowered her hands to his back and squeezed him.

  "It's okay, baby. Mommy will be all right."

  "What if he's waiting on the other side of the door? What if he's out there with a gun and shoots you? What are Dylan and I going to do if he kills you?" Blake looked up at her expectantly.

  "Honey, I'm going to tell you a secret. We never told you about this before because you were too little. You're a big boy now so I think I can trust you with this."

  "Told me what?"

  "There's another way out of here. We never told you before because we didn't want you playing around in there."

  "In where?"

  Teresa released the painful embrace and limped toward the wall. Along the outside wall was a stack of cardboard boxes. The printing on the boxes indicated that they were cases of MREs. "Help me move these boxes," Teresa said.

  Dylan was looking at a book and not paying any attention to their conversation, but when they started moving boxes he became interested. He came over and helped Blake move the stack. When the boxes were moved, a metal hatchway was exposed. It was a square around 3' x 3', with a hinged steel door in the middle. The door was held closed by a steel bar that was dropped into notches. There was also a padlock on a hasp.

  The purpose of the padlock had been to keep the children, namely Blake, from leaving through this hatch if he were to somehow find it. The combination was written down on the wall and Teresa entered it into the padlock. In a moment she yanked the shackle open and put the padlock on a nearby box. She pulled the steel bar out of the way and swung the door open. It creaked loudly, revealing a dark passage.

  Both boys crouched and stared into the blackness.

  "Where does it go, Mommy?"

  "When we built this house, your daddy bought a whole truckload of big drainpipes. This entire part of the house was above ground then. We knew that when they finished the house they would scrape dirt up against the house to make the yard flat. Before they did that your daddy put this hole in the wall and put this door on it. Then he put all the pipes leading away from the house and made an escape tunnel."

  "Where does it go?” Blake asked.

  “It comes up in an old stora
ge building behind the house. When you follow this tunnel to the end, it turns straight up. All you have to do is stand up and push up on the piece of plywood above your head. It's not nailed down and will slide out of the way. Then you’ll come up in the shed and you can leave."

  "It looks scary in there," Dylan said. "It's dark and there's probably things alive in there. Snakes and rats and praying mantises with their creepy little arms."

  "You're not going through there," Teresa said. "I am. I'm going to go check on your grandmother. You and Blake are going to stay here and watch a movie."

  Dylan nodded eagerly. "I’d like that a lot better."

  “I'm still scared, Mommy.” Blake swallowed hard. “What if something happens to you?"

  "It'll be okay. When I leave I want you to lock this hatch behind me. I don't know which way I'm coming back yet but if I come back through the tunnel I'll knock on the door and then I'll talk to you so you know it's me. Okay?"

  Blake nodded but did not look reassured. "Are you leaving now?"

  “I need a few minutes to finish getting my stuff together first, then I'll go."

  Blake nodded seriously. “Okay. Can we watch The Goonies?"

  Teresa laughed. "Of course."

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Whitetop, VA

  When Conor woke up in his hammock, he initially thought he’d experienced his best sleep in years. Then he moved.

  His calves, thighs, and lower back felt like they had rusted together overnight, making it difficult to even get out of the hammock. Attempts to swing his legs over the side eventually tipped it too far and he was dumped out onto the ground. Since the hammock was only hung about eighteen inches off the ground to begin with, the fall wasn't too bad. In fact, he had to admit it was probably the only way he would have made it out of there.

  "You've become a crusty old man," he said to himself. "How did that happen?"

  In his world, consciousness wasn't fully attained until he had sucked down at least two cups of coffee. Conor dug into his trailer and pulled out a little folding aluminum stove that burned quarter-sized hexane tabs. He filled a one quart camping pot from the river, not bothering to filter it since he was going to boil it anyway. He did give it a brief visual inspection to check for any floating wildlife.

  While the water heated he took down his hammock, shaking any leaves and bugs out of it. He rolled it up, stuffed it in its sack, and tucked it away in the trailer. He'd slept under a lightweight sleeping bag that night, which he packed up also. Were he just camping in the woods he wouldn’t go to much effort with his grooming, but since he expected he'd be meeting company today, he brushed his teeth and combed his hair.

  It didn't work any miracles. He didn’t look a whole lot better afterward than he looked before, but it made him feel better to have at least made the effort. Conor noticed that his water was at a gentle boil. He poured it into his metal mug and added a packet of instant coffee. Generally, he hated the instant stuff but this was the Starbucks instant and it was halfway decent. Any port in a storm.

  Conor disconnected the old battery from his bicycle, stashed it in the trailer, and replaced it with a new one. The six-pound battery was supposed to give him assistive effort for a range of around twenty miles. He'd see if that held true today. The topo lines on the GPS made today's route look like a roller coaster ride. Constant ups and downs, twists and turns.

  Conor became impatient waiting for his coffee to cool. He decided to pour it into a water bottle and let it cool on the ride. He tucked the hot bottle into the holder on the frame of his bike. As he was doing this, his satellite phone rang.

  "Hello?"

  "Hope I’m not disturbing your beauty sleep.” It was Kevin Cole, calling from the Bridges compound.

  "No, I slept like a baby but I’m awake now. I getting ready to pedal out into a beautiful morning,” Conor replied.

  "Pedal?" Kevin asked incredulously. “You’re on a bike?”

  "It’s an experiment, and it would take too long to get into right now. To what do I owe the pleasure of hearing your voice so early in the blessed a.m.?"

  "Status update, mostly."

  "I traveled all night and got past Damascus. I spent the night camping in the forest. Had to stop and take a power nap. Now I'm getting ready to get back on the road. Once my coffee cools, that is."

  “Coffee? You always did travel in style.”

  "You’re not turning me around are you? Have Robert and the lady made contact with their families?"

  "No. I wish I was, but our travelers have run into a little trouble getting to their reunion. There's a lot of hostile activity around us right now and their attempts to leave have not ended well."

  "Everyone’s safe, I hope?"

  "No one's been hurt, but that’s just been luck. It’s not safe for them to make another attempt. I don’t want to go into details right now but they’ll be delayed at least for a few days, maybe longer. They wanted you to pass a message on to their families when you reach them. Let them know about the delay and that they’re safe."

  "I can do that," Conor agreed.

  "How has your trip been so far? Any issues?"

  "Nothing that ruffled me feathers. Just a scenic tour of the countryside so far.”

  "That's good to hear. When your journey has run its course, can you call back with a status update?"

  "I plan on it."

  "Good. Safe travels, my friend."

  "Same to you, buddy."

  Conor clicked off his phone and stashed it. With his gear all packed up and strapped in, he pushed his bike toward the trail. Walking limbered his muscles a little, but the first mile would be rough. It would be like breaking loose old rusty fittings, which was what his joints were apparently becoming.

  The world was green and the light illuminated it in all shades of the color. The beautiful morning made him reflective. It made him think of family, both living and dead. He missed them all. The world hadn’t got noisy yet and it was easy to float among his thoughts. It was times like these when he recalled his life and the things he’d done, the people who had once been part of his life, but weren’t any longer.

  So many miles, so many years had passed between him and that boy from Ireland. He still loved bikes and perhaps he was still the same in a lot of other ways too, but the world was certainly a different place. He wondered about the state of things and whether the world would ever get back to normal again. He thought about his own daughter and hoped he’d prepared her to be okay with whatever the world brought her way.

  He thought about his wife and wondered what she’d be doing today if she were still alive. Would she have laughed at his outfit when he left the house, then kissed him on the cheek for luck? He thought of his mom and the many times he’d needed her support since she left him. Then, in the odd way that the mind sometimes worked, he wondered if aliens were real because that was one of the things he desperately wanted to know before he died. It was weird how the mind worked. He laughed at himself because it made him feel better.

  At the trail he looked in both directions and saw no one. He mounted his bike and began pedaling. He couldn't help but let out sounds that reflected the soreness escaping his body. He tried not to curse, the morning being so peaceful and beautiful that it would seem an atrocity. Yet there were more than a few grunts and groans, but they would diminish as he moved on.

  Ahead of him was about seven miles of riding, he estimated. He was looking for an old abandoned railroad station called Green Cove. Once there, he could get off the steep trail and take up a gravel road for a short bit. He had a physical address for where he was going and if the GPS was accurate, which it wasn't always with rural locations, he should be there by midday. He could stash his bike in a thicket and start the next phase of his mission.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Konnarock, VA

  It took Debbie nearly twenty-five minutes to motorcycle to her friend Sharon’s trailer. Sharon’s living conditions were very much l
ike Paul and Debbie's. Both lived in decrepit trailers with peeling paint and leaking roofs, the yards decorated with garbage, cast-off furniture, and cheap cars that sat where they died. Despite the fact that their homes looked nearly identical, Debbie always thought that Sharon's place looked trashy. She didn’t see her own place that way. It was home. She didn’t seem to notice that it was the same filthy pigsty that she criticized her friend for living in.

  There was a group gathered in the yard playing some kind of drinking game on a folding coffee table. They were rough-looking people with stained clothes and bad skin. None looked like they showered frequently, even in the best of times. Again, this was a case of Debbie noticing things about others that she did not seem to notice about herself. The game ground to a halt when they heard Debbie coming. They watched her with a wary curiosity.

  Debbie killed the engine. A rusting Mazda pickup truck, the bed full of bagged aluminum cans, sat nearby with the door open, Hank Williams, Jr. blaring from the stereo. Debbie recognized some of the people, but there were others she didn't know. Some were people she knew but didn't like. She had every reason to assume the feeling was mutual.

  There was one man that held a grudge because she wouldn't go out with him. There were at least two more that had threatened Paul for owing them money for drugs they’d fronted him. She and Paul had been able to avoid those men for most of the summer but there was no avoiding them now. If Paul was there, they’d have come at him already. She wasn’t completely sure they wouldn’t give her the beating they intended for Paul just to send a warning.

  There were two women seated around the table. She knew both of them, recognizing them as women who would do anything a man wanted if he would keep them high. Yet again Debbie found it easier to overlook her own shortcomings. She made her way uneasily to the table. All eyes were on her but no one said a word. There were no greetings, no gestures of acknowledgement. She felt tense and uneasy.

  "Sharon here?" she asked, her voice conveying her nervousness.