by Connor Mccoy
He followed Angelica as she sprinted across Main Street and the grassy mall, to the open area in front of Town Hall. A group of the invaders was holed up, hiding behind the pillars that flanked the main entrance. He dove behind another of the concrete garbage containers, barely avoiding getting hit. The bullet hit the sidewalk, inches from his position, rebounding to the left and sending a chip of concrete past his ear.
He wasn’t unnerved, exactly, but he wasn’t feeling soldier-like either. The flying bullets made him flinch with fear. He wasn’t sure what he was fighting for, other than to protect his own life, and that he could have been more successful by staying in the closet. He didn’t want to kill anyone, but if he didn’t return fire, he had the feeling he’d be found wanting by Angelica. What would they do with their new doctor if he didn’t prove himself in battle? Keep him prisoner forever? Or worse?
Glen rested his head against the rough surface of the concrete and dreaded the consequences of this battle. Angelica was stationed behind a light pole to his left, able to see every move he made. Not that she was watching him. She had her rifle to her shoulder and her eye on one of the men hiding at the top of the Town Hall steps.
He risked a quick look, men and women at the top of the steps. He corrected himself mentally. And he noticed a couple of them moving down the handicap ramp to the right of the stairs.
“To your right,” he shouted to Angelica, “on the ramp.” He heard the spit of the bullet as it exited her rifle and the thud as it hit its mark. This woman was deadly and he didn’t know whether to be grateful or appalled. She showed no hint of emotion, not remorse nor glee. How could she be so without emotion in this life or death situation?
Probably she would say it was necessary to stay detached during a gun battle. You didn’t want your brain distracted by fear or the need for revenge. A clear head and a steady hand were your tools for staying alive. And everyone wanted to stay alive.
But not everyone could keep calm in perilous situations. Glen, himself, was having trouble focusing, a thing that was as second nature to him as breathing. Normally. But this was not normal. Not even close.
He felt exposed in his position. Anyone coming from the rear quickly could get a shot off and kill him from the safety of the grassy mall while he was watching Town Hall. He risked another look around. Not too far off, to his right and a little closer to the steps, was a dry fountain. There was an abstract sculpture in the middle, which probably used to shoot out water, that he could use as cover, and a three-foot wall around the outside that used to keep the water in the fountain, that he could hide behind.
Now he just had to get there.
He waited until Angelica fired on the building again and, hoping they were distracted, ran for the fountain. Bullets were flying. But he managed to leap the stone wall and take cover behind the statue without getting shot. He dropped to his belly and squirmed around to the other side of the fountain, where he lay in a partial sitting position with his back against the fountainhead, his head just high enough for him to peak over the wall and see what was going on. Water soaked through the seat of his pants, rainwater had collected in the fountain.
Concrete shards rained down on him as bullets found their mark in the statue above him. His forehead stung, and he reached up to discover he was bleeding. He wiped it with his sleeve so the blood wouldn’t trickle into his eye. He could worry about disinfecting it if he made it through this alive.
He began wondering why Angelica had brought him into the fray. Wasn’t he more useful as a doctor than a gunman? Any child could be taught to use a gun, not that Glen was advocating for children to be put in harm’s way, but a surgeon? He had skills that couldn’t be replicated in the current situation. Perhaps they still were training doctors in the cities, but without pre-med programs and feeder universities, where would the candidates come from?
It occurred to him that he might be able to return to his work as a neurosurgeon if he traveled back to the city. They likely still were doing that kind of work in Philadelphia and, if not there, then in D.C. But did he really want to be back in the city, working under all that pressure? And it would be intensified in this reality. This cobbled together power grid could not be stable. What did you do if the power went out in the middle of a surgery that could only be performed with a camera feed?
He remembered his days in the operating room. His had been a teaching hospital, and observers would sit in a gallery that looked down on the procedure, and cameras took live feed that was projected onto screens mounted around the room. He was so focused on his work that he never noticed if someone in the gallery passed out or vomited in a bucket. Not everyone could watch the opening of a brain or a scalpel plunging in to remove a tumor or penetrate a cyst blocking the fourth ventricle. It was best for those people to find out early in their training that being a surgeon wasn’t the best option for them.
Sometimes there would be applause from the gallery after a particularly tricky and successful procedure. And when you lost a patient, which did happen despite all the precautions, there would be respectful silence and bowed heads as they filed out of the room. He didn’t mind the audience, but he preferred it when there was no one in the gallery. And better still when he had a skeleton crew. The fewer distractions, the better, and when he had “his” team, the doctors, and nurses that he’d trained and insisted on working with whenever possible, then he reached a Zen-like state. He could perform an entire surgery without speaking more than five works, three of which were “close, please, doctor.”
Those days were long gone, and it had been many months since he’d even thought of them. But still, though he had stopped performing surgery, he had more value as a doctor, so why put him at risk? Was this a test? And if so, was it Angelica who was testing him, or Terror?
That’s when he began to get angry. God bless it! Didn’t they know what they’d be losing if he got killed out here? They’d made it clear that their other doctor was a drunk, yet he’d put money on where to find him, and it wouldn’t be on the battlefield. Rage burned through him. He aimed the rifle over the retaining wall and fired, not caring if he hit anyone or not.
If he got out of this in one piece, he’d be telling Terror and his general in no uncertain terms what he thought of their stupidity. They were acting like idiots, for goodness sake, and neither of them struck Glen as stupid.
It was then he realized his own stupid mistake. He’d attracted the attention of the invaders with his rage-filled gunshots. A woman appeared on the outside of the fountain. He hadn’t seen her coming because he was too low in the basin to see much, and he hadn’t wanted to expose his head by taking frequent looks. All she had to do was to stay low, keeping the fountain between Angelica and herself. Then, as she got closer, drop to her hands and knees so he wouldn’t be able to see her. She’d executed the move perfectly, and he’d fallen into the trap.
She raised her gun and took aim, but he had his rifle ready, and didn’t hesitate. It was his life or hers, and he wanted to live. He aimed at her chest and pulled the trigger. She looked surprised for a moment as blood blossomed from her chest, her eyes locking onto his, then she fell.
The sound of clapping came from behind Glen, and he turned to see Terror standing in the shelter of the fountain, one hand wrapped and held tightly to his chest, while the other smacked against the bare skin of his arm, an injured man’s show of appreciation.
A couple of things came to Glen at that moment. The reason the woman looked surprised was that she hadn’t seen Glen in the shadow of the fountain, hadn’t known he was there. She’d had eyes only for Terror. And Glen hadn’t saved his own life, he’d saved Terror’s. He hadn’t shot in self-defense. Although at the time, he’d thought he had. He wasn’t sure what he felt. He believed that when you engaged in a gun battle, you have to expect to die, even if you are a woman. Maybe especially if you are a woman. He wasn’t sure.
But he couldn’t quite grasp the fact that he’d killed a human being. It kep
t slipping sideways in his mind. For a moment he thought he should see if he could save her, but he glanced at Terror, who shook his head.
“She’s gone,” he said. Glen turned away and added vomit to the blood and water in the fountain’s basin.
Chapter Six
Mia led Sally and Christian through the forest in the direction she hoped was the way she had seen at the top of the tree. Before she could get too worried about getting lost, they came to the road through the woods, and because the trees blocked the view from the town, they took the easy way. Mia enjoyed walking down the middle of the road as if she owned it.
When she could see the sky ahead, she led them back into the forest and aways away from the road. When she judged they’d gone far enough, she took them toward the town, arriving at just the spot she’d hoped for. They were hidden from the guards, at least for the time being, and they could move, bent over through the tall grass, and get to the town wall undetected.
There was a gate at the road, but they were headed to a breach in the wall. If she hadn’t gone up the tree, she never would never noticed it, but she had, and it was their way in. It was an opening in the wall, but because the two ends overlapped, it wasn’t evident from the outside. The townies hadn’t even posted a guard near it. She’d have to be on the lookout for other obstacles, though, because there must be something there. Otherwise, there would have been a guard. These people weren’t stupid.
She motioned to the others to stoop low and led them out into the grassland that graced this end of the town. Maybe it was pasture for their animals, or perhaps they used it to grow wheat, Mia thought. Otherwise, it just seemed like a waste of land. If you aren’t going to use it for grazing, you may as well plant some lovely veggies. Or an orchard, an orchard would be nice.
The grass tickled her face, and she had to hold her nose to stifle her sneezes. Maybe that’s what it was for, to reveal burglars with allergies. She held an arm out to keep the grass out of her face and kept moving. They needed to get to the wall and get through it.
They slowed as they approached. She was sure there must be a booby trap or an alarm of some sort. She was looking carefully, so she didn’t miss the big ditch that surrounded the wall and was covered with a mat of woven grasses to camouflage it. Clever. There were probably sharp sticks down there, ready to impale the unwary traveler.
Christian and Sally helped Mia pull the woven covering aside and looked down. No pointy sticks ready to impale them, but a pile of bear traps so big she didn’t think they could step over them. The ditch must have been dug with a backhoe, because it was at least six feet wide and ten feet deep. This was going to take some effort to overcome.
“We could climb down there, trip the leg-traps and toss them out of the ditch,” Sally said. “That shouldn’t take too long.”
“I don’t like it,” Christian said. “What if one of us slips and falls? You could lose an arm.”
“I’m not too thrilled about climbing down there,” Mia said. “I’m not sure I could get back up again. I think we need to go back to the tree line and find a tree that’s fallen, bring it back here, and drop it over the gap.”
“Where do you think they got all those traps?” Sally asked. “There must be hundreds, thousands, if this ditch goes all the way around the town.”
“I don’t know,” Christian said. “There must have been a storehouse or a manufacturer nearby. Otherwise, how the hell did they do this?”
Mia looked down. There were more than she could count between them and the other side. She shivered, they looked so deadly.
“Let’s do this,” Christian said. “A tree big enough to span the gap would be too heavy for us to carry, but if we collect branches and drag them back here, we can pile them over the traps. It won’t matter if the traps go off because it’ll just be wood and not our limbs that get snapped. My only worry is that the noise will attract attention.”
“What if we threw a bunch of tall grass over the pile first?” Mia said. “The grass could muffle the sound of the traps snapping.”
“That might work,” Christian said. “I’ll go back and bring tree limbs, you two tear up the grass and throw it down there.”
So, they went to work. Mia helped Sally pull armfuls of grass, bring up the roots and dirt balls as well. Mia thought the dirt was probably a better dampener than the grass itself and started kicking the edge of the ditch to knock it down. Kicking dirt was easier than pulling grass out of the ground anyway. Together they were able to get a pretty good cover on the near side of the pile, but it was harder to cover the far side. They just kept piling dirt and grass on the traps, hoping they were getting the far side too.
Mia accidentally kicked a rock onto the traps. It landed hard enough to trip a trap. The grass may have dampened the sound, but it still made Mia jump. She ducked down, pulling Sally with her. They held their breath and Mia mentally counted to thirty before she inhaled. Nothing yet. She listened for shouts from the wall or footsteps, but the only sounds were the ‘pop’ ‘pop’ of the gunfire at the other end of the town. Maybe the bear trap couldn’t compete with that. And perhaps, because it was at the bottom of a ditch, the sound didn’t travel.
Mia didn’t know for sure why no one came running, but she was grateful that she hadn’t alerted the townsfolk. She sighed and tugged another clump of grass, roots, and dirt from the ground under her knees and tossed it into the ditch. Still nothing.
Christian came up behind them, dragging large branches with the leaves still clinging to them.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “from where I was it just sounded like a branch falling. Another noise in nature. With all that gunfire I doubt it even registered.” He dragged one of the longer branches toward the ditch. “Help me with this. I think it might be long enough to cross the gap.”
They scanned the wall for movement before standing the branch on the end of the limb that used to be attached to a tree and then letting it fall across the ditch. It reached, but only with the topmost branches. They were twig-sized and probably would break the minute one of them stepped onto the limb.
“Let me try,” Sally said. “I’m the lightest.”
Mia huffed. As if.
“I’m not saying I’m much lighter than you,” she explained to Mia, “but I’m suppler.”
“I don’t think anyone should try crossing until we’ve added more branches,” Christian said. “Why risk falling into bear trap hell?”
“He’s got a point,” Mia said. “You wouldn’t want to end up down there.” She pointed to the ditch. “Especially the far side, where we might not have put very much grass or dirt.”
They dragged over another branch, but it wasn’t as long as the first. The high boughs rested on top of the first one, but didn’t reach the far side of the ditch.
“But look,” Sally said. She put one foot on the first branch, and one on the second, right at the edge, so her weight was on the near edge of the ditch rather than on the branches resting on the far edge. “They make a pretty good bridge. If we could get some long ones, like the first.”
They performed their crouching run back through the tall grass to the edge of the forest and scouted for more fallen branches. Mia found a yellow birch that seemed to have a fairly tenuous hold on the Earth. It already was leaning at a sharp angle, so Mia pressed her weight against it to see if it would come down. It moved a little, so she went to the other side and tried hanging from the trunk.
Again, no luck. Mia started kicking at the high side of the trunk, uncovering what she could of the root system. Then she tugged until the tree leaned far enough over that she could scramble up the trunk, where she found a perch high in the air and bounced. The tree had a pretty good springing motion, and she had fun for a few minutes bouncing up and down. It was almost like a teeter-totter, except your feet never touched the ground.
What’s the saying? It’s all fun and games until the tree falls over? Mia bounced her weight hard, and that’s precisely what happened.
One minute she was riding a bucking bronco and the next she was on the ground, trying to figure out what had happened. She’d been successful, that’s what had happened, and she’d hit the ground hard. There was no slow motion, gentle glide to the ground. Nope, she’d come down hard.
She laid on the ground, feeling dazed. She didn’t even have the energy to call out for the others. She stared up at the sky, watching the leaves of the other trees shimmer in the breeze, and wondering if she’d broken anything. Finally, her lungs started to function, and she sat up. Nothing was broken, but she wouldn’t be doing that again in a hurry.
She let out a low whistle to get Sally and Christian’s attention and tried lifting the trunk. It was heavier than she anticipated, but she was able to tug it along toward their path through the grass. She’d never make it all the way there, but she could get it started.
Christian found her first. “Nice find,” he said, grabbing the other side of the trunk. It went much faster with two of them, and they were almost at the path when they caught up with Sally tugging another large branch. She had sweat on her forehead and was breathing in gasps.
“Leave that one,” Christian said. “Mia found this tree, and I think it’s tall enough to span the ditch.”
“Fine,” Sally said. “I’m all worn out from jerking this one along anyway,” she said, grabbing the trunk farther down.
It wasn’t long before they had the yellow birch lying across the ditch. They stood it up and dropped it next to the two they’d already placed there.
“So, we didn’t have to cover the leg traps after all,” Mia said. “We just have to cross this tree without falling off.”
“The trunk is too narrow,” Christian said. “Crossing that would be like walking a tightrope. We need at least one more of these.”
“You don’t think the first one we put down will do?” Sally asked, pointing to the limb that barely spanned the gap.