They were displaying their rifles and handguns openly. Gary had his rifle held across the front of his body, ready to raise it and fire at a moment’s notice. He found being here with his family more stressful than being here with Jim and Randi. These people were his responsibility. Jim and Randi were not.
Gary’s family didn’t know it but it was not their weapons, their clothing, or anything of that manner. What gave the vendors pause was the direction from which these newcomers arrived. From the direction of the valley. Rarely did anyone come from that direction. Most of the vendors at this market were townspeople, as were those who came to trade with them.
There were no greetings when Gary, Debra, and Sara reached the first of the vendor tables. Conversation remained stalled, as if someone had lifted the needle on the phonograph and had yet to set it back down. Gary’s family didn’t let the awkwardness of the moment deter them. This was what they'd come to do. Besides, after a long winter of being shut in with no socialization, perhaps all interactions with strangers were a little awkward. People had to figure you out. They had to grasp your intentions.
The shoppers from the valley found nothing good about the goods before them. Most of what people displayed were cast-off items and housewares they had no need for. There were cooking pots, manual can openers, and broken camping stoves. There were some tools and a few old guns of the hunting variety. There were small piles of loose bullets and shotgun shells alongside knives and the singed stubs of used dinner candles. There were tattered matchbooks advertising used car lots and colorful butane lighters priced according to how much fuel remained. There were old faded spices and canning jars with no lids. The only food available was the dregs of every pantry – dented cans of olives, pimentos, peas, and beets.
Debra shot Gary a disappointed look. She’d seen none of the things on their list. They’d seen nothing worth even trading a single bundle of greens for. She wondered if they needed to engage the vendors and talk with them to find out if they had additional wares that weren’t on display. It was reasonable that in this lawless world, the best items might remain out of sight.
14
Jim prayed that whatever compelled him to follow Gary's family into town was simply misplaced paranoia. Watching through binoculars from a treeless hill across the river, everything happening before his eyes told him his suspicions had been correct. There was furtive whispering taking place in the vendor area. Gary and his family either couldn’t see it or mistook it for conversation. Witnessing it only increased Jim’s sense of dread.
With an urgent pat on the back, a child was sent tearing across the parking lot and into the main entrance of the superstore. He emerged moments later with a handful of armed men. The boy pointed to the restaurant where Will stood guard over the horses. When the men slipped off in a crouch, ducking between shot-up cars, Jim knew it was time to act.
“Shit.”
His curse wasn’t merely an expression of alarm at the danger headed Will’s way. It was for the whole sordid mess he was certain would eventually land in his lap. Stories would spread of Jim Powell killing more people. His reputation would continue to grow in a way that was not beneficial, nor did it promise long life and a peaceful existence. Yet he couldn’t worry about that now.
Jim dug his heels into his horse, headed toward the restaurant where Will waited. Hopefully he could get there before the men closed in on the young man. Will’s eyes were dutifully glued to his wife and her parents. He was not watching his six and Jim couldn’t imagine Gary leaving the kid there without a lecture about monitoring his perimeter. Will was young, though, and his eyes were on his wife, concerned more with her safety than his own. The boy didn’t yet understand that sometimes you had to keep yourself safe to keep others safe.
Jim dropped into the trees and lost sight of the supercenter complex, hoping he got there in time. Stealth would slow those armed men but he still had a river crossing and a stretch of road beyond that. The icing on the cake was that Jim was not a very competent horseman. He could stay atop the beast most days but held no illusion that he’d mastered the skill. If he was going fast, it was only dumb luck and random chance that kept him in the saddle.
He slowed at the bank of the river and eased the horse into the water. He let it go at its own pace, picking its steps and moving when it felt comfortable to do so. Once it was nearly across, Jim kicked it and the horse lurched, taking several great lunges to pull itself up the riverbank. Now on smoother terrain, Jim pushed the horse to a run but chose to stay just on the shoulder of the paved road. He didn’t want the clatter of hooves to give his approach away.
Halfway to the supercenter he dismounted and tied his horse off to a guardrail. He sprinted up the last stretch of road, then diverged from it when he was closing in on the restaurant parking lot. He bounded up a steep bank of clumped, overgrown grass and crouched at the top, peering beneath the guardrail and into the restaurant’s parking lot.
While he couldn’t see Will from his position he could see three men clustered behind the restaurant, whom he assumed to be the same three he had seen crossing from the superstore. To approach without having caught Will’s attention, the men must have come around the long way, travelling through fields and ditches to reach the back of the restaurant. That detour may have bought Jim the time he needed to intercept them.
Two of the men held long guns, and another was creeping toward the front of the restaurant, an aluminum baseball bat at the ready. Jim could see how this was going to play out. At least, if the men had their say. They would club Will and take the horses. Jim had no idea what lay in store for Gary and the rest of his family at that point but it could be bad. They were caught between the vendors and the armed men hidden behind the restaurant. If they were even able to flee on foot, they would do so while taking fire from two different directions. It would suck badly.
Jim played out scenarios in his head. Could he salvage this without having to kill anybody? If he yelled at the guy with the bat, alerting Will, it was likely the gunmen would open fire on him. Predicting the moves of armed and desperate men wasn’t like chess. The possibilities weren’t defined by a strict set of rules. It was chaos.
He was down to seconds now. He had to do something. Bat Man was a mere six feet from the corner of the restaurant now. After that, Jim would lose sight of him and there would be no easy way for him to intervene. In six feet, Will would be another valley resident lost to violence and there had been too many of those recently.
The bat wielding man flattened himself against the corner of the restaurant and listened. He was trying to guess Will’s position, planning his attack. He raised the bat in front of him with both hands, hefting the weight. His chest flared in and out as he steeled his nerves.
“Fuck it,” Jim hissed.
His red dot optic on Bat Man, Jim pulled the trigger twice in quick succession. At less than a hundred yards’ distance there was no chance of missing a center mass shot. The first caught the bad guy square in the sternum and flattened him against the building. The bat clattered to the concrete sidewalk. Jim’s second shot was a hair to the right, a heart shot. He slid down the side of the building, leaving a blood smear on the bricks behind him.
Jim swung toward the two armed men at the delivery entrance to the restaurant. He expected to find them panicking, perhaps already on the run, but they were cool under fire. In fact, they’d already spotted him. One pointed a finger in his direction while the other was doing the same with a scoped bolt-action rifle.
A screech of panic burst from Jim’s throat as he flattened himself into the grass. There was a BOOM from the high-powered rifle and the round punched a hole in the guardrail above his head. It was immediately followed by a shotgun blast. Tiny pellets peppered the grass around Jim and pinged ineffectively off the guardrail. Jim rolled back up, his eye already on the optic, and found the guy with the rifle cycling the bolt.
As soon as the red dot crossed his body, Jim pulled off two quick shots. On
e round caught meat and the other ricocheted off the brick wall. The rifleman dropped his weapon and clutched at his shoulder. Jim swung back onto him and squeezed off another round. He screamed and dropped like his strings had been cut.
The man with the shotgun was backpedaling when Jim swung toward him. He pulled off one round, then another. The man was half-running, half-falling, and Jim couldn’t track him fast enough. Rounds pinged off brick and concrete on all sides of him, then he was around the corner and gone.
15
Everyone in the vendor area froze at the sound of gunshots. They were too close to mean anything but trouble. Gary spun and saw Will crouched down near the grazing horses, trying to locate the shooter. From his vantage point, able to see sides of the restaurant that Will couldn’t see, Gary spotted a man. It was the one with the shotgun, the one who’d escaped Jim, easing alongside the restaurant. He was heading for Will.
"Will!" Gary yelled.
Will looked in Gary’s direction. Gary gestured in the direction of shotgun man. Will could see the gestures but couldn’t interpret them. Did Gary want him to gather the horses and head that way?
Gary didn’t have time to yell another warning; the armed man was getting too close. Sara screamed at her husband but he didn’t know what the screams meant. Gary made a decision. He saw no other course of action. He raised his rifle and flipped the safety off.
Many of the vendors were startled by the gunshots, though not all of them. Some knew what was happening, knew men had been dispatched in Will’s direction. Gary taking out one of their men was not part of the plan. They couldn’t let that happen. One of the vendors went for a gun.
Debra caught that flicker of movement in the periphery of her vision. Following the movement, she spotted a grizzled old man pulling a revolver from the pocket of his denim jacket. Debra didn’t hesitate. Her left hand shot out, pushing Gary away from the line of fire as she drew with her right. Just as Gary had trained her, she never took her eyes off the attacker. She drew and pushed out with the pistol. When the front sight centered on his chest she pulled the trigger. He jerked and sprang to his feet but did not drop the gun. She put another round in him and he sat down hard, the gun flying from his hand.
Then all hell broke loose.
Gary flinched and spun at the gunshot mere feet away from him. He saw his wife with a gun and, following the direction in which it was pointed, spotted a man writhing on the ground. Torn between helping his son-in-law and getting his wife and daughter to safety, Gary was pulled by blood. He swung his rifle toward the vendors, watching for additional threats.
It was sheer chaos. People were running, hiding under tables or beneath cars. There was screaming, crying, and shouting. Then there was another gunshot and Gary saw Sara fire a round into a woman levelling a shotgun on Debra.
"Behind that car!" Gary barked, pointing toward a gold Taurus.
He prodded Debra in that direction, then Sara, his head whipping between them and the vendors. There were people everywhere and it was impossible to tell who was a bystander and who was a threat until they pointed a gun. In the distance he saw people flooding from the superstore and running into the parking lot. Some had guns, some had baseball bats. Were they investigating the shots or there to take part in the attack?
Gary backed away from the table, sweeping his muzzle across a ninety-degree range of activity. He never took his eyes from the red dot. When that dot landed on an angry, bearded man slapping a hunting rifle across the roof of a car and pointing it in Gary’s direction, he pressed the trigger. Blood sprayed and he dropped from sight.
Gary ran sideways and dropped behind the Taurus with his family. He made sure Sara and Debra were protected by the engine block, then turned his attention to Will. The guy intent on ambushing Will had thought better of it. Perhaps the gunfire had scared him and he assumed the young man would be on guard now. For whatever reason, he was backing away from the front of the store and returning in the direction he’d come from.
“Get down,” Gary told his family. “Watch under the car to make sure no one is coming this way. If you see feet, blow them off.”
Gary rolled onto his stomach and drew a bead on the man retreating from Will. Before he pulled the trigger, Jim flew from around the corner, dumping rounds into the approaching man. He did a staggering dance step and then dropped, blood pooling around him.
“Will!” Jim called.
"I'm here," came the young man's terrified voice.
"You’re safe. Get back here with those horses."
"Got it."
Jim sprinted from the back corner of the building to an abandoned car about forty feet across the parking lot.
“I’ve got you covered. Go now!” Jim yelled.
His rifle dangling from its sling, Will fast-walked around the corner of the building, a set of reins in each hand. He made a beeline for the back of the restaurant. Jim crouched at the front wheel of the abandoned car, his rifle pointed across the hood, ready to provide cover. He looked for Gary and his family but didn’t immediately spot them.
“Gary!”
"Here!" Gary replied.
The first wave of armed attackers from the superstore reached the perimeter wall of damaged vehicles. They took positions and began firing at the gold Taurus sheltering Gary’s family, riddling it with bullets. Others from the group opened up on Jim, shattering the windows in the burgundy LTD he stood behind.
Jim ducked, shards of safety glass raining down on him. “Is anyone hurt, Gary?”
“No, just scared to death.
"You've got to come this way. We’ll cover you. Can everyone run?"
Gary got wide-eyed nods. They were terrified.
"We can make it!” he yelled back.
“Will, you with me?” Jim yelled.
“I’m here,” he replied.
“We’ve got to lay down cover fire. When they start running, let it fly. Got it?”
“Got it!”
“You guys ready?” Jim asked.
“Ready,” Gary replied.
"MOVE!"
Gary sent his daughter first. At her appearance, Jim and Will sent rounds into the fortified wall of vehicles hiding their attackers. So as not to cluster everyone up and present a bigger target, Gary waited a full second before sending Debra on her way. She ran a bit slower, past the discarded basket of herbs and greens she’d hoped to barter. One second later, Gary followed behind her, sidestepping and joining in with the suppressive fire.
The cover fire worked against the shooters huddled behind the beat-up cars but it was at this point that gunmen on the roof of the superstore opened up. Sara had already reached the safety of the restaurant but screamed when rifles began firing from the parapet wall around the top of the supercenter. Rounds skittered off the pavement around Gary and his wife. A round hit a concrete curb and ricocheted with a distinctive whine. Panicking at the eruption of gunfire, Debra’s pace broke. She faltered and her feet tangled. She went down hard, her handgun skittering across the pavement.
Gary dropped to a knee beside her and continued firing with one hand while offering an elbow to his wife.
Jim was unable to locate the source of the new gunfire until he caught a flash on the roof. “The roof! They’re shooting from the roof! Light those fuckers up!”
Jim did a quick mag change and dumped rounds at the parapet wall above the main door of the supercenter. At this point he didn’t care if he hit anyone or not, it was just about making them quit firing. No, forget that. He wanted to kill them. This was becoming personal.
Behind the restaurant, Will and Sara broke a quick, terrified embrace to peer around the wall and see what Jim was yelling about. Noting the angle of his fire, Will took aim at the parapet wall and started chewing through his own mag. Terrified that her parents were exposed to this withering fire, Sara got on her knees, leaned around the corner, and fired her 9mm rounds at the superstore with wild abandon.
The shooters at the superstore paused under
the barrage. Gary got Debra on her feet. She loped toward the restaurant with Gary behind her, moving and shooting. He paused long enough to retrieve her handgun, never taking his eyes off the superstore. By the time he ran dry, his wife was safely behind the masonry walls of the restaurant. He broke pace and made a mad dash to join her, falling into the waiting arms of his family.
Forty yards away and crouched behind a vehicle Jim shook his head. His position was taking all the fire now. "Quit reuniting and cover my ass!" he barked. "I'm coming in!"
Gary did a quick mag change, then a pair of rifles and a pair of pistols poked around the corner, spitting hot lead. Jim bolted to join his friends, sending wild rounds in the direction of his attackers as he ran.
“What? No hugs for me?” he gasped as he blew by his friends and reached cover.
Gary quit firing long enough to throw him a look, trying to figure out if he was serious or not.
"It was a joke. Let's get out of here," Jim said. "If we don't get ahead of them, they'll box us in. There are too many to keep track of."
“What the heck even happened?" Debra asked. "One minute we were just standing around and the next, bullets are flying everywhere."
"I was watching from across the river," Jim said. "Three men came out of the superstore and headed for Will’s position. I figured they were going for the horses. It was all I could do to get over here and intercept them."
"You followed us?" Gary asked between bursts of firing, his face a grimace of fear and determination.
"I had a bad feeling.” Jim gestured at the dead men lying a few feet away. “We need to get out of here but I want to search these bodies first. There's this guy and two more like him around the corner. I’ll be damned if I’m going to leave weapons and ammo that can be used against me the next time I come into town."
"I got this one," Will said, reaching out and snagging the dead man’s pants leg.
The Ungovernable Page 12