Half Past Midnight (14 page)

I continued, “There are two big differences. First, the range on these guns is much farther than paintball guns. Always remember that.” She nodded.

“And second—”

“I know,” she interrupted. “If you get hit, you don’t come back in for the next game.”

“You got it.” I pushed back an urge to force her to stay behind. Instead, I turned to Ken. “Ready to go?”

Ken hefted the AR-15. “Waiting on you.”

I took a deep breath to calm my nerves, then slung my machete over my shoulder. “Let’s find out what all the ruckus is about.”

***

Megan and I quickly taught Ken our hand signals, and we trudged through the brush in silence. For me, the feeling of déjà vu was intense. The last time I had gone sneaking through the woods like this had very nearly been fatal. Actually, it
had
been fatal, to Edgar and Michael.

The shots had come from south of Amber’s spread, past Ken and Cindy’s place. That was all we had to go by, so Ken led us through the brush on barely seen game trails. He whispered that he and some of his neighbors used many of these trails when they were hunting, so a multitude of crisscrossed tracks led to and from most of the homes in the area.

After several minutes, Ken signaled for us to slow down and come forward cautiously. When we moved next to him, he whispered, “This is the back of old man Kindley’s place.”

I pointed out that the house looked vacant.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Do you want to check it out?”

I remembered what Amber had said about all of the deaths and radiation sickness in the area. “Not really…” Visions of grisly, mummified carcasses filled my head. “But I guess we should.”

First, we skirted all around the house making sure no unfriendlies hung about. Then, we quickly ran up to the back door.

“What do we do now?” I asked. “Kick it in?”

Ken turned the knob, and the door swung inward. “The trouble with living in the city is that you can’t trust anyone.” He grinned. “You wouldn’t even dream of leaving your house unlocked, would you?”

I shook my head, and Megan and I followed him in. A quick search of the dark and musty interior revealed it to be mercifully empty. We noted a pantry full of canned goods that we could come back for at a later date, but there were no bodies.

The next house was two miles further, and turned out to be much the same as Kindley’s. As we trekked down the trail, Megan snapped her fingers to get our attention. She pointed to her nose and mimed sniffing the air.

I sniffed and, sure enough, I faintly smelled burning wood. Ken nodded as well. We were getting close to something.

He led more cautiously, stopping frequently to peer intently ahead before leading us into any especially thick brush. As we proceeded, the smell got stronger. And every so often, we could hear the faint sound of voices, several voices.

Finally, Ken signaled for us to stop and wait. The sound of voices had grown steadily stronger until we could nearly distinguish the words of the conversations. It sounded like someone was throwing a party, and we were nearly on top of them. Ken inched his way around a curve in the trail ahead. He returned only a few moments later, jaw clenched in barely controlled fury. “Just around the next bend is John and Pat Robertson’s place,” he whispered. “There’s a group of eight men dressed in camouflage and armed to the teeth having a party on the back porch.”

Obviously, there was more, so I just waited for him to drop the other shoe.

He took a deep breath before he continued, “It looks like they killed John. They just dragged his body out into the backyard and left it.”

Now I thought I understood. Ken felt the need to avenge his friend. But he also knew we couldn’t afford to do anything to attract attention to ourselves unless we had no choice. John Robertson was beyond help, and revealing ourselves this soon wouldn’t change that. But perhaps his wife was still alive.

“Mrs. Robertson?” I asked.

He answered slowly, watching for my reaction. It occurred to me that he seemed more unsure of me than I was of him. “She’s the party. They’re taking turns…” He glanced at Megan. “They’re gang-raping her.”

I knew it wasn’t logical the way my gut twisted at those words. After all, they had murdered a man. But hearing that they were raping the man’s wife put them into an even lower category. They were lower than animals—diseased.

I looked Ken directly in the eyes. “If we do this, we shoot to kill. No one gets away. We can’t risk any of them following us home.”

He didn’t bat an eye. “Suits me fine.”

I turned to Megan. “Do you think you can find your way back?”

“No way,” she slung the crossbow and hefted the Kalashnikov she’d brought. “I’m staying. I don’t have any problems with this.” I recognized the stubborn set to her jaw, the same one her mother displayed when her mind was made up about something. “It’s not like murder, Dad. It’s justice. Besides, what do you think would happen if we didn’t kill them? They would find us on down the road tomorrow or the next day, and they would come after us next. Or maybe they’d find someone else. We have to stop them now.”

She was right, of course, but I was surprised to find that she saw the same implications in the situation that I did. As far as she was concerned, the discussion was over. I couldn’t force her to go back, and she knew it. She would simply follow as soon as I turned my back.

“I know what the stakes are, Dad.”

“All right, then,” I conceded. “Just don’t forget what you learned in paintball. Don’t stay in one place too long. Shoot and move. Don’t get pinned down.”

She nodded, and we planned our attack.

First, watching for any guards, we skirted around the tree line to the right. We found only one. He was poorly hidden in the trees and obviously more intent on watching the abuse of Pat Robertson than doing his job. We got within twenty feet of him, where Megan felt sure of her shot. A single bolt from behind into the base of the skull ensured his silence.

I searched her face for a reaction. I saw her pain at having killed again, but there was also determination.

Ken and I left Megan there, where she would wait for a gunshot from one of us. At that point, the element of surprise would be gone anyway, so we would all simply try to take out as many as possible, as quickly as possible. The tricky part would be doing so without hitting Mrs. Robertson.

Ken led me back to our original location, directly opposite the back porch, and then skirted alone around to the left side of the house. When he got into position, he would signal by beginning the melee, and Megan and I would join in after his first shot.

From where I knelt, I had a clear view of the proceedings in the backyard. One rough-looking man sat in a chair smoking a cigarette, apparently in deep contemplation of the universe. Four more were having a great time as they sat on the tailgate of an old four-wheel-drive pickup passing a bottle of bourbon. I could hear them joking and congratulating themselves on the ease with which they had “wasted that old geezer.”

Pat Robertson was tied to a picnic table where two men with no pants waited their turn behind the one currently violating her. Mercifully, she appeared to be unconscious. I carefully took aim at the head of the man hovering over her. When Ken fired that first shot, the rapist would never hear the second one. I waited for ages.

A quick barrage of machine gun fire came from the trees to my left, and the tailgate party dissolved into blood and screams. Ken had taken all four of them out of the fight before they even knew they were in one.

I had expected a single shot. I had, in fact, forgotten that the AR-15 had been converted, so the burst of half a dozen shots in one second startled me. I reflexively squeezed the trigger just as the scum on Pat Robertson turned his head. A nickel-sized hole appeared where his nose had been, and the back of his skull splattered the far wall.

I fought the bile back down my throat and aimed at the next pantless man, but he fell screaming and clutching his chest as Megan’s rifle echoed from my right. I shifted aim and fired at the next rapist. There were now seven men dead or dying in the yard. The cigarette smoker had been either fast or lucky and had managed to get into the house. If we gave him time to dig in, he’d be able to hold us off forever.

Ken must have realized the same thing because we both rushed toward the back porch as one. “Megan!” I yelled. “Cover us!”

She immediately began firing round after round into the house at random locations. The slugs plowed through the walls and windows, ricocheting around the interior. Ken and I were halfway across the yard when two men came rushing out of the back door and dove for cover behind a large planter. Another smashed out a window to aim at Ken as he quickly backpedaled to the trees. I fired wildly at the window, more to make the guy duck than out of any hope of hitting him. Ken fired a stream of bullets at the planter to keep the other two down, and we retreated back to the cover of the trees.

I cursed myself for not anticipating more of them in the house—another stupid mistake that could have gotten us killed. For that matter, it still could. I heard shouting and return fire around the corner of the house and, as I peeked through the brush, I saw a line of several men run into the trees across the yard. Megan was in trouble.

I grabbed Ken by the shoulder. “Come on!” I hissed, and retreated deeper into the woods so we couldn’t be seen from the house. We ran full throttle toward where we had left Megan. A moment later, the gunfire stopped.

I figured there was no reason for us to be quiet. They knew we were out here, and I didn’t relish the idea of being shot by my own daughter. “Megan! We’re coming in from behind!”

No answer. No gunfire.

A second later, Ken grabbed my shoulder and yanked me down to kneel beside him. “We have to slow down and get off of the trails, or we’re gonna run into an ambush.” It ate at my gut, but he was right.

It slowed us down considerably as we eased ahead silently, scanning every clump of brush thoroughly before we moved close to it. As we neared the area where we had left Megan, I thought I heard whispers, though it was difficult to be certain with my own heartbeat pounding in my ears. I grabbed Ken’s arm to get his attention, pointing first at my ear, then to the woods ahead of us. He nodded, understanding. We eased back slowly to circle around, all the while fear for my daughter gnawing viciously at me.

We snuck around to come at the area from the side. Time seemed to crawl slower than we did, but finally we peered through the brush and saw the backs of four men waiting to ambush us as we barreled down the trail. Four shots later, they joined their buddies in Hell.

We moved back into the brush before the echoes had faded. Almost immediately, we heard shouts from our right.

“Jimmy! Rick! Did you get ’em?”

When Jimmy and Rick didn’t answer, the voices began a worried muttering amongst themselves. We slowly eased around to come in behind their location until Ken abruptly signaled a stop. He gestured me to come even with him and pointed. Up ahead and barely visible through the scrub huddled a group of more than a dozen men… and Megan. A dozen of them! How could we possibly take them all?

They all faced away from us, to where we had left Jimmy and Rick facedown in the trees. One of them held Megan as a shield. Every few seconds, one of them would nervously scan the trees, occasionally peering into the clump that hid Ken and me. We couldn’t get closer without risking exposure, yet we weren’t close enough to get them without endangering Megan. I was in a quandary.

The men finally provided the answer. The one holding Megan pulled out a sheath knife and put the blade to her throat. “All right, you bastards! You get out here where we can see you, or I’ll waste the girl.”

There was my chance to get closer, and seeing the way the man held the knife to Megan’s throat gave me an idea. He had unknowingly put Megan in a situation she had been in hundreds of times. It was a classic self-defense situation in our advanced classes— Knife Defense Technique Number Twelve. I hurriedly whispered to Ken and sketched a hasty drawing in the dirt at our feet. He gave me a quick thumbs up, and I quickly began to back away. Soon, I was far enough out and began to run back in the direction from which we had originally come. I wanted to come in from the trail where they expected us, so as not to give away Ken’s location.

The poor fool holding Megan shouted, “You’ve got ten seconds to show yourselves. Then I’m gonna slit her throat!”

“One!”

He had no idea that from the moment he had put the knife to her throat, he was at her mercy. Even if every other man in that group survived, he didn’t stand a chance. I knew exactly what she would do. I only hoped she would wait a few more seconds.

“Two!”

I leaned the carbine against a tree to the right of the trail.

“Three!”

I pulled out one of the smoke bombs, latched the snap of the pouch through the pull ring, then twisted the pouch around to the right side of my web belt where the dangling incendiary wouldn’t be as noticeable.

“Four!”

I began moving quickly down the trail, making more noise as I moved.

“I hear you out there!” he screamed. “Now come out with your hands over your head, or I swear I’ll kill her, man! Five!”

“Okay, I’m coming out!” I raised my hands and stepped around the last bend in the trail. Instantly, all guns pointed at me. They all peered down the trail behind me waiting for more of us to appear.

“Where’s the rest of you?” the knifeman demanded.

“All around you. They all have their guns pointed at you.” I put on my best poker face, scanning the group. There were fourteen of them. “If anything happens to either me or the girl, you’re all dead men.”

They looked even more nervous, rapidly scanning the trees around them.

“Tell them to drop their guns and come out, now!” he shouted frantically.

“If I did that, you’d kill us. That wouldn’t be very smart on my part.”

“What’s to stop me from killing you now?”

“Think about it, you idiot,” I sneered. “Twenty guns pointed at you, and you have to ask a stupid question like that?”