American Blackout (Book 2): Slaves Beneath The Stars Page 25

  “Getting spanked for operating without the appropriate heavy-machinery license,” Predator said, still watching the show over his shoulder, helping the young man up the steps, greeted by Edna and Howard.

  Edna said, “We’ve got a cot in the study off the kitchen. Beautiful beds upstairs, but he doesn’t need to climb anymore.”

  The boy was in pain, and the most he had done since his rescue was grimace and complain at Cricket’s instructions.

  In Howard’s study the cot was full of magazines and books. Edna simply pitched everything at a desk across the room, cluttered with more books and papers.

  “He told me he wanted a cot in here so he could nap whenever he felt like it.” Edna wagged a finger at her husband, who just smiled.

  On the cot they stripped the boy to his underwear and found burn marks, bruises, and cuts everywhere.

  “Son, what’s your name?” Howard asked.

  When Cricket heard “Dakota,” she rolled her eyes.

  “I’m going outside for a moment and check on the battle.” She ran to the porch and saw the gunship straight to the south, maybe three miles, flying a tight arc and continuing to pound those rascals with very poor manners.

  Gun drawn, she approached the ridge and saw the devastation: earthmover on its side, engine smoking, other monster vehicles on fire, cabs and tires flame-filled and smoking. She saw movement at the bottom of the hill, a couple of savages moving up the road toward her and her friends. She looked around and didn’t see any other stragglers, and hit the ground and waited. She figured at fifty feet she’d pop both of them. One carried a rifle on his back; the other gripped a pair of pistols.

  She looked back at the house in case Predator decided to join her, and then eyed the climbers as one savage pulled out a big silver-plated something and shot the man next to him. He took the rifle and went through the man’s pockets, stuffing everything into his own pockets.

  The man continued, and Cricket thought he caught sight of her. She wasn’t sure until he slid the rifle off his back and took aim. She rolled left, and the bullets hit close by. She rolled toward the street until she knew she was momentarily clear. The screen door busted open, and Predator led with his Glock out in front.

  “He’s got a rifle!”

  “So do we!” Edna said, following Predator out the door and shoving a .30-06 in his hands. The lumbering killer crested the ridge and raised his rifle, and Predator was waiting, nailing him in the chest with two rounds. The man twisted left, puppet-like, and disappeared down the hillside.

  “More are coming,” Predator said, joining her, the two of them peering at the carnage below.

  Cricket looked up and down the undisturbed street and wondered how long before some really pissed-off escaped cons showed up for a night of “partying.”

  She watched the C-130 make another pass, shooting into the smoldering remains of its first strike.

  Shaking his head, coming up the steps, Predator said, “Edna, come with us. There could be enough survivors to really give you two a headache.”

  “Talk to Howard,” she said, willing to at least listen.

  “Ma’am, I don’t want to sound impertinent, but we’ve got to talk fast.”

  “You’re an articulate man, Mr. Predator Jones. I like that.”

  Inside, they received Howard’s diagnosis of the young man.

  “Perhaps internal injuries. They ran him over with an old Chevy Impala. I guess they were going to finish him that way—keep running him over. Dear Lord, what is it with some people…”

  Dakota made a slight nod, indicating the truth of the story.

  Howard continued, “But then someone got the bright idea to strap him to the dump truck. Did the same with other captives.”

  Everyone else tied to those machines is dead,” Cricket said. “Howard, we need to get moving.”

  “I guess,” he moaned. “Terrible thing to abandon a home.”

  Edna said, “No time to complain. We’re headed north, Howard. Taking the Lincoln.”

  Head down, smiling, Howard said, “That’s a fine car. I guess there’s no time to pack—”

  “Get the keys,” Predator said, smiling back. “Always loved the old Lincolns.”

  59

  A Bottle of Sherry

  Predator suggested Cricket take the Lincoln; he and the couple, the Barracuda. They used the cot, the legs folded, to carry Dakota to the Lincoln, parked in a single-car garage behind the bed and breakfast.

  “You’ll do anything to drive my car,” Cricket said, crawling onto the wide back seat of the Lincoln and grabbing the boy gently by the shoulders, pulling him inside while Predator slid out the cot.

  “As precious to me as my Cub,” Predator said.

  Edna started to untie the boy’s shoes. “We’ll get these off, make his ride a bit more comfortable.” Cricket watched Edna tenderly remove the boy’s shoes with a lovely smile used over a lifetime and still fresh.

  A single gunshot made Cricket flinch, and Edna disappeared from sight. Predator dropped the boy’s legs and yelled for everyone to take cover. Cricket drew the Colt and ran to the back of the car. Bullets were flying, pinning down Predator and Howard, who crawled atop his wife.

  The shooter had steadied himself with a shoulder against the side of a small shed at the back of the neighboring house. He was taking aim when Cricket took the shot. The man jumped out of view, and Cricket wasn’t sure if she’d hit him. On the next street behind the B&B, she saw a couple on a deck crouched low. The woman was pointing at the shed. Cricket ran to a spent vegetable garden and hit the ground behind a mound of dried plant stalks.

  A series of shots got a scream of defiance from her group, still under attack. She came across the backyard of the couple on the porch, who made motions for her to stop, and she did, taking cover behind an enormous pine whose lower branches nearly touched the ground.

  Amid the late-fall colors, extinct flower beds, and the afternoon sunlight shining on the dead, the dying, and the fighting, Cricket crossed an open yard—mostly in shadow from the trees bordering the house—in order to get a shot at the man. Alas, she doubted the accuracy of her Colt from such a distance. Like so many times before, her plan emerged boldly, straight from the gut.

  When she made it through the shadowed clearing, she hid behind a maple and eyed the killer. Shirtless, with a shaved head and enormous arms even at a distance, he was firing on Predator and her new friends. He soon needed another magazine and dug in his pants pocket.

  Aiming the .45, arms outstretched, Cricket started her run. Closing in on the killer, she saw him look up and smile. As he chambered a round, she was already firing. She had seven shots, and the first two missed. She allowed a half-second pause, playing the game of distance and time. The man took aim carefully. He too needed a precious millisecond and calm hands. He fired and missed, and she squeezed off the rest into the man, who staggered sideways, gun pointed down.

  The severely wounded man looked up, a birdwatcher amazed at some rare sighting. She slowed to slam in another magazine when she stumbled and fell atop the shooter, who bear-hugged her against his body before she could scramble away.

  Though dying, the man had plenty of squeeze left. Cricket was in a vice, smelling the ATF—alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. She drew her right leg close enough to reach her gravity knife and struck the man’s side multiple times. She worked the knife back and forth and feared that even in death his massive arms would drag her onto the train he had just boarded.

  His blue eyes still focused on something above, not on her, and the gurgling, half-mad speech wasn’t for her either but for the thing above.

  Atop the man, ready to throw up in his face, Cricket felt his arms relax, yet the beefy limbs encircling her were a great knot of flesh, and she imagined having to cut down and through him to free herself.

  His heart no longer pounded against hers. There was no way he was playing dead. Finally, with more muscle power then she knew she had, Cricket screamed an
d unified every muscle in her body to pry herself free of the killer.

  She stood up, snatched the Colt from the grass, and turned to the couple, who gave an exhausted wave like they had been through the life-death struggle themselves. Cricket returned the wave and staggered back to find Predator Jones guarding Howard, who sat on the gravel driveway holding his dead wife in his arms. Cricket regained her wits, reloaded, and looked to the back seat.

  “He was never hit,” Predator said, glancing at Dakota. “Howard took a bullet to the leg. He can’t walk.” Howard looked up.

  “My wife and I are staying. You two get going. Take the boy and the Lincoln. Just help me into the backyard. There’s a nice bench alongside the fountain with a girl carrying a watering can. I’m not bleeding much.” They helped him, dragging him most of the way, and then gently carried Edna and laid her down beside him, her head resting in his lap.

  “There’s a bottle of sherry in the house, a revolver, and a shotgun.”

  Predator went to retrieve the items, and Cricket stood guard.

  “Howard, you could come with us. You’d have a chance—”

  “Abandon my Edna? No way. I think I’ll last about an hour. Maybe the good Lord will see to it that we at least get that time of peace and quiet. An hour’s a long time. Edna and the sherry will keep me warm, and the shotgun should give caution to the next intruder.”

  “They’re coming. The planes didn’t get them all.”

  “Learned in the service that even though planes are a great asset, they can’t complete the job. That’s why we have ground troops, like you and Mr. Jones.”

  “Boots on the ground,” Cricket managed, seeing the couple in their garden, everything faded and beautiful, stone statues, a large birdbath full of water, and a bird feeder not far from the public bath.

  “I’ve always been a selfish sonofabitch, and I’m going to enjoy my wife’s company, the day, the light, and those birds who are going to come back as soon as it gets quiet here.”

  Predator walked out with the items requested and rested the shotgun against Howard’s leg, along with the sherry, glass, and gun on a small ceramic table Howard could easily reach.

  “Now go,” Howard said. “Make it quick.”

  Cricket rushed him, kissing him and his wife on unsteady legs, and headed to the Lincoln.

  “I’ll follow you in the Barracuda,” Predator said.

  Cricket checked on Dakota, who only nodded at each question and showed no interest in talking, absorbed with his own discomfort. She started the magnificent old car and drove slowly onto the alley behind the couple’s house. She couldn’t see the man and his wife, but a startling number of birds were now headed there.

  60

  The Great Hunt

  Once again they were entering the haunted forest. Cricket glanced back at Predator Jones in the Plymouth Barracuda. Wow, Mom and Dad, it’s still a handsome car! Even coated in dust and mud-caked. She kept the windows up, the doors locked, and smiled at the fuel gauge indicating an almost full tank. Of course, Howard and Edna would keep the car immaculate and ready to go. She wiped away a tear and added the couple to her pantheon of giants on the horizon.

  Dakota moaned from the back seat.

  Cricket leaned her head back, saying, “Only about forty minutes. Could almost cut the time in half if I sped up. Too dangerous in your condition. I left that water bottle on the seat. Did you get a drink?”

  He answered with a feeble moan covering a distant “yeah.”

  Glancing again at Predator, she saw him flashing the headlights on and off, his signal to stop.

  Before exiting the car, she checked on Dakota and told him that she was checking in with her partner. In the first fifteen minutes, they had passed a few bands of people, who looked at the two-car parade in disbelief. Some shouted or raised a hand for assistance, but she couldn’t stop. She peered deep into the haunted forest and saw no one else as she left the car.

  Predator was extra cautious, too, turning in a large circle, slowly, the AR-15 waist level. They met at the back end of the Lincoln.

  Predator jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “Fritz just called in. He needs one of us back at Howard and Edna’s neighborhood to spot the prisoners. A lot of recidivism I guess. Anyway, I’ll go back. They’re regrouping, ready to storm the first foothill and probably take cover in homes, wooded areas. There’s an agent in their midst, a guy they thought was one of them in prison. Fed them dope, whatever they needed. The few machines left should be easy to see, but they’re waiting for nightfall to move them into the haunted forest. They know the Hilltop is rich with supplies.

  “The agent can’t always get to his radio, and I’ll see a lot better from the B&B. The Mustang and C-130 still have several hours of fuel, holding twenty miles south of target. With both the help of the agent and myself, the Air Force believes they can accurately deliver a final blow. Cricket, you know I’ll bring the Barracuda back to you all perfect and beautiful.”

  Cricket hugged her friend.

  “Switch cars? Switch jobs?” she said.

  “Naw, they need you back at the farm. You’re the glue. You and that little nun. I’m doing what I like best, working on my own. I’m a rebel at heart.”

  She hugged him again.

  “I’ll have dinner waiting for you. Your beverage, sir?”

  “Scotch and a splash of water.”

  “Absolutely.”

  From the driver’s seat Cricket watched him back up and inch forward several times on the narrow road before getting turned around. He didn’t leave until he was satisfied she was on her way and all surprises had backed off for a spell, at least that’s what she surmised. Before leaving she reached over the seat and checked Dakota’s pulse. It was strong. He was sleeping soundly.

  All the dangers of their mission were mirrored in the forest’s ancient oaks, a row of giant executioners, even the ones laid low by time and weather.

  She drove slowly. The headlight beams revealed the monster trees to the left and right; the forest was a dark abyss. She remembered her favorite English teacher talking about the structure of a short story, saying you opened a dark closet and shined your flashlight inside, visually recording only a few interesting items, tying them together, unlike a novel’s thorough examination of themes and subjects and characters and many threads. This forest was her short story: the flash of headlights, monsters in the shadows, and an injured young man in the back seat.

  Actually, the day had been a series of short stories, a compilation of brutality, heroism, and new characters like Howard and Edna who would stay on her radar for years to come. She only hoped that the young man behind her and breathing roughly would live to enter the fullness of a long story in a richly expressed “novel.”

  A form darted across the road, and she braked reflexively. It had been just at the edge of the Lincoln’s lights. She squeezed the steering wheel, hands at the standard ten and two o’clock. The next form entered the bright lights and dispelled her excuse of weariness.

  Wearing a long cloak, the person flew across the road, the dark material billowing in slow motion, at odds with the person’s speed. Cricket checked her rearview mirror, but there was only darkness until she braked and the red taillights illuminated the trees behind her. To her left and right, other forms raced near the road. She glanced at the speedometer. The big red needle moved between twenty and twenty-five. She accelerated.

  By nearly forty, her strange companions of the forest disappeared, and she calculated twenty minutes to reach the farm. Dakota moaned something, and she tried to soothe him with quick words about distance, time, and medical treatment fast approaching. She hit the Lincoln’s bright lights just in time to see trees blocking the road. She braked but still plowed into a large limb at walking speed. She backed up when something struck the car.

  She turned in her seat to check every direction when a flurry of sticks—spears, arrows—hit repeatedly. She backed up and picked the most obvious entry into the wood
s off to her right, between two oaks.

  She plowed into the woods. Trees, fallen or standing, prevented her from racing back to the road.

  “What is this, The Great Hunt?” A nervous attempt at humor. “Hold on, Dakota, the natives are in search of a woolly mammoth but may be satisfied with an old Lincoln.”

  The attack of small spears and sticks ended as several gunshots struck the car. Cricket slugged through small trees and over dead limbs and thickets, a constant scraping along the car’s sides, aiming for the road. Dakota never made a sound except to thrash about in the back seat. When a volley of arrows and small sticks rained down on the roof, she floored the Lincoln and sideswiped a large tree—“Sorry, Howard!”

  She was headed downhill, confused as to the whereabouts of the road. She aimed for an opening in the woods and sped up. Seconds later she was braking hard before plowing into a lake. She decided to make her stand.

  Cricket turned off the engine and the lights before jumping out of the car. She opened the back door and found Dakota dead from a single bullet that had penetrated the top of his skull. She went to the trunk and grabbed the Remington and pistol-grip shotgun, and flung the backpack over her shoulder with shells and several full magazines for her Colt. She also grabbed the remote clipped to the visor and a nine-volt battery from the glove compartment.

  “Batteries included,” Predator had said, hours ago, handing her the garage remote for the C-4 device and battery. He had made her hold out both hands and slapped the remote in one and the battery in the other. “Keep ’em separate until ready.”

  The overcast kept the surrounding woods and lake in a suffocating darkness. The wind was cold, and Cricket tried to get her bearings. She heard the hunters running through the forest, sharing their excitement with fellow hunters—she was the beast caught in a tar pit, or perhaps the lone buffalo chased for hours and soon driven off a cliff.