Home: A Stranded Novel (20 page)

Emily’s farm was free
d almost as easily as the first two had been with one exception. One of the guards had been outside relieving himself, but he quickly surrendered when he saw the wall of guns pointed at him. They kept him secured as they dealt with the remaining five guards in the house. None of them made it out.

Emily’s reunion with her father brought tears to Alex’s eyes and he was completely surprised to find his sweet daughter carrying such a big rifle. Once the townspeople had been briefed on what was happening
, they all turned to the only guard left for information.

The man was a complete mess. He had tears and snot running down his face as he blubbered and pleaded for his life. Like the true coward that he was, he gave them all the information they asked for. Once the questions were answered, Harry unslung a rifle he had taken from one of the
dead guards and used it to motion the man to his feet. When the sniveling guard realised what was about to happen he fell forward onto his stomach and begged.

“Please, please don’t kill me! I swear I never hurt anyone! I just stood guard! Please…give me a trial, a lawyer, something?! This is murder!”

Alex was starting to agree with the man. There had been a lot of killing so far tonight and maybe this man should be treated differently. She looked around at the other faces staring at the man and saw there were others that felt the same. The decision was made when Josh took an angry step forward.

“You didn’t hurt anyone?
Really? How about the big hole we found in the dump? Know anything about that?”

The guards eyes flared wide and he slid his eyes away from Josh before answering.

“I don’t know nothing about that!” He obviously was lying and Josh used his boot to prop him back up.

“You lying piece of filth! We scouted the whole town! We know everything you bastards have done! We know about your little pleasure house and what happens to the girls that work there! We saw the latest victim thrown on the pile of bodies in the dump!” Josh’s face was bright red in fury and he was screaming so hard by the end he was spitting.

The terrified man fell back on his butt and tried to scoot away from Josh. “No, no that wasn’t me! I’ve been here all week. I didn’t have anything to do with that!” Something seemed to click behind the man’s eyes and he looked at the faces around him. “You guys took out Jerry and his crew, didn’t you?” When he was met with blank stares, he explained. “We sent out a crew to scavenge and last I heard they hadn’t come back. We all just figured they had found a good stash and were partying it up somewhere, but it was you guys, wasn’t it?”

While he was talking, Quinn was quietly explaining what they had found in the dump. Alex saw Harry’s face go pale and the men around them that heard Quinn stepped back in shock. Fast movement caught her eye and she saw the anguished face of Mr. Beck as he snatched a rifle away from one of the men. He took two steps towards the guard on the ground and in one motion leveled the barrel and pulled the trigger. Two men were quick to disarm him and pull him away. Alex had to turn away from him when he started to sob that his
mother had been at the nursing home.

The guard’s body was dragged away and a crew volunteered to go in to the house and remove the bodies and clean it up. The team that was going to retake Josh’s farm was assembled and ready to go.

Alex glanced at her watch and stifled a yawn when she saw it was after three in the morning. They only had a few more hours before they needed to be in position to take out the roadblocks. Alex looked around for her friends and saw Quinn and Josh talking quietly together. Dara and Lisa were leaning up against the barn and Alex thought that they looked like they were sleeping. Emily was still wrapped in her father’s arms and Alex wondered if he would ever let his daughter go again. She scanned the yard and finally found David and Cooper standing off to the side. David was still looking shell-shocked and Cooper was staring off in to the night. Alex stared at Cooper sadly. She wished there could be a happy reunion for him as well. It wasn’t fair that he had come so far and fought so hard with the rest of them, and yet he had no one waiting for him to come home.

Josh and Quinn approached her and broke her from her sad thoughts. Quinn studied her face.

“Are you okay?” he asked with concern.

“What? Oh yeah, I’m fine. I was just thinking it wasn’t fair that Cooper has no family left. He looks so alone. I’m worried about him. He told me after we were done freeing the town, he was going to leave.”

Josh looked over at Cooper in surprise.

“Where would he go?”

Alex just shook her head. Josh’s face took on a stubborn expression.

“I’ll talk to him. He’s our family now and I’ll make sure he knows it.”

Quinn nodded and Alex sent them a grateful smile.

“So
, are we about ready to go? All this standing around is making it hard to stay awake.”

Quinn brushed her hair away from her forehead.

“Are you and the other girls still planning on going over the fence? We have a lot of men on our side now. We should be able to take whoever is left in town.”

Alex started shaking her head. “We have to
come too. If they barricade themselves in with the women and kids they might start shooting hostages. We need to have people inside in case that happens. We know what they’re capable of. None of this will matter if we lose our moms.”

Josh gave a curt nod. “We figured you
'd say that so I want you to do us a favor. You and the other girls need to stay here and get a few hours of sleep. There are enough people going over to my place that you guys don’t need to come. Besides, we won’t be doing any of the heavy lifting anyway.”

Alex looked over at Dara and Lisa who had slid down to the ground with their backs to the barn wall and heads resting against each other.

“Are you sure, Josh? We should finish this together.”

“Really
, Alex, it’s okay. You guys get some rest. You’ll need to be sharp for what’s coming.”

Quinn shoulder checked Josh lightly with a grin.

“He just doesn’t want Dara to see his dad crying all over him. Right, Joshy?”

Josh tried to look mad but gave it up.

“What can I say? The Green men love large! We’re not afraid to show our manly

emotions.”

Alex had to smile. Josh’s
dad was a big solid man with an even bigger heart. She had seen him tear up in pride over his kids many times. She thought he was a huge sweetheart.

“All right, if you’re sure, we’ll grab some sleep here but you better come back and get us!”
she warned.

After they promised they would be back, they rounded up Cooper and David and left with the rest of the crew across the field to Josh’s farm. Alex pulled her two sleepy friends up from the ground and she and Emily led them in to the house for some much needed rest.

Alex smothered a yawn as she peered through the blinds from an upstairs window in the house Cooper and Dara had used to scout the schools a few days before. She could see a few women and kids in the park walking down the cultivated rows that had been planted. She turned away and flopped down on to the bed beside Lisa. Dara was leaning against a wall flipping through an outdated magazine she had found
, and Emily was pacing back and forth with nerves as they waited for Quinn to radio them with the news that the roadblocks had been taken out. It had been easy to sneak into town and make their way to this block of houses and all they were waiting for was the final number of guards still left in town. When no one showed up for visiting day, they expected the gang to send out a few men to check on the farms. Once that happened, the guards at the roadblocks would be taken out and Quinn would radio them before the freed and armed townspeople would move in.

Emily and Alex knew that their fathers would never agree to let them be a part of such a dangerous plan so they had lied to them and told them they were going to the campsite to bring back more supplies. Both girls felt incredibly guilty about lying to their fathers
, but they refused to leave their mother’s fates to chance.

Once again the waiting around for something to start was draining on them all. All of the girls wore baggy sweat shirts to conceal the
handguns they were taking into the school. They had wire cutters to get through the fence and they were ready to go and finish this. All they needed now was the final number of guards they would have to face if they locked down the school.

Even though they were expecting it, they all flinched or jumped when the
walkie talkie squawked and Quinn’s voice came over it.

“This is Quinn. Are you there?
Over.”

Dara picked the radio up and responded for him to go ahead.

“Everything outside of town is now clear. They sent six more guards out to check on the farms. They were taken care of at Josh’s place and we’ve cleared all four roadblocks. No injuries this time.”

Alex let out a sigh of relief. While the girls had been sleeping, the raid at Josh’s farm hadn’t gone as smooth as the others. They had lost one man and another was injured when one of the gang members was alerted to them entering the house and a short but brutal firefight occurred. Alex was brought out of her thoughts when Quinn came back on the line.

“The total count we’ve come up with from the farms, roadblocks and the highway is fifty five dead. So there is still ten or less in the town somewhere. Over.”

Alex knew that a lot of the guards had been killed last night but the number fifty
-five seemed huge to her. She shook her head at the waste of life, so many dead on both sides. Was this what they had to look forward to for the rest of their lives? Would things ever get back to normal?

“We’
re moving into town from all sides and we should be in range of the school and community center within twenty five to thirty minutes. You girls should go now if you can.”

Dara keyed the mike after getting nods from the others. “We’re heading out now. Good luck, over.”

Quinn’s end came back with static before he said, “Be careful. Please, be careful, over.”

Dara went to clip the radio to her belt when a new voice came over the radio. It was loud and it was mad.

“Alexandra April Andrews, this is your father! You better not be planning anything! I heard what Quinn just said and it better not have been for you girls!”

Alex’s eyes flew wide and she threw a hand up to her mouth. Before she could even reply
, another voice came over the radio.

“Emily Mather, you get your butt back home right this minute! You girls need to leave this to the men! You’re all too young to be playing war!”

Emily’s face went from little girl guilty to stone cold mad in a split second. She snatched the radio from Dara.

“Dad, I know you think I’m just a little girl but I’m not. We haven’t been “playing” war. For the last six weeks we’ve been living war! We know what we’re doing. I love you and I’ll see you after this
is over. Now please stay off the line. We need it clear for the next part of the plan. OVER!”

She turned and thrust the radio at Alex with a challenging stare. Alex squeezed her eyes tight in dread and blindly held out her hand for the radio. Emily slapped it in her palm and she brought it to her mouth.

“This is Alex. Sorry, dad. I love you. Over.”

The room was silent as they waited to hear any response. A few heart beats later, it came.

“My baby girl, be so careful. I just got you back!”

Alex swiped her eyes of tears before responding.

“I’ll bring back mom, dad. Love you, over.” She clicked the button back to transmit a second later. “Quinn, we’re going now, over.”

“Copy that, good luck!”
he responded right back.

No one moved or spoke for a minute until Dara broke the mood.

“You guys are soooo grounded!”

After a beat of silence they all broke into tension
-relieving laughter. Lisa stood up and adjusted her sweater to cover her gun. In a perfectly deadpan tone she said, “You should offer to give up your iPhone.”

Dara chimed in, “Or your computer. No internet for a month!”

Alex faked a heart-broken expression.

“Damn, I really wanted my cell and the computer for paper weights.”

Emily was shaking her head.

“You just watch. I bet they try and take away our guns!”

The other three girls shot her panicked looks until Alex broke out into a devilish grin.

“That’s ok
ay. We left a bunch back at the camp site. I know a great place to hide them!”

The girls might have been making light of the situation
, but as they filed out of the room and down the stairs they were all conscious of just how dangerous things were about to get for them.

The wire cutter made quick work of cutting a section of fence big enough for them to slip through and Dara left the tool in the grass as they split apart and started to pretend to pick weeds from different rows. Dara and Cooper had told them what they had seen when they scouted the park
, so they all had garbage bags that they stuffed grass and a few plants in to make it look like they were working like the other captives. The girls moved from row to row and slowly got closer to some of the other women in the field. When Alex and the others were only one row away from two women on their knees pulling weeds, they looked up and noticed the four new arrivals. The first woman was in her forties and with her was a girl around twelve. The older woman stared at them in confusion and opened her mouth to speak but Emily, who was closest, gave a sharp shake of her head. They had only seen one guard walking the field, but now that they were closer to the building they could see three more milling around the tables set up on the concrete that skirted the high school.

Alex had made her way closer to Emily and the woman and girl. She was about to ask the woman about the number of guards when the sound of gunshots came from the distance. Everyone froze in place for a split second before all their heads turned in the direction that the shots had come from. A shout had them looking back the other way. The guard who had been in the field was running towards them
, waving them towards the building. The girls stayed on their knees as he got closer and the woman and girl seemed to cower against the ground.

“Get up
, you lazy bitches! Get in that school right now!”

He bellowed angrily at them. He passed Lisa and Dara and stopped a few feet from the group of four.

“I said, get in the school. NOW!”

His face was angry but Alex could also see a flicker of fear pass through his eyes before they went wide in shock. Lisa had stood up when he passed her. She came up beside him and stuck the barrel of her gun into his armpit when he raised his arm to point at the school. She didn’t even hesitate when she pulled the trigger. The guard staggered sideways and flopped to the ground. They all heard the shot
, but it wasn’t as loud as it should have been because the barrel had been pressed against his body.

Alex and Emily looked towards the school in panic, afraid the guards there would be running towards them but they were surrounded by all the women and kids they were trying to herd into the school and not one of them turned in their direction. Alex let out a breath of relief and turned back to her group.

“We’re good. They didn’t hear it. Throw your garbage bags on top of him and let’s go!”

The woman and girl were staring with big eyes at Lisa in shock. Emily had to shake the woman’s arm to get her to refocus.

“Hey, snap out of it!” When her eyes came to rest on Emily, she explained,

“The men at the farms are free. That’s them doing the shooting out there. We need to know how many guards are here at the school.”

“They’re free? My husband and son? They were at…”

Emily cut her off. “Lady, we need to move!
How many guards?”

It was the young girl that answered her. “There were six when we started work this morning.” She shot a glance at Lisa. “
There’s five now, I guess. I don’t know where the rest are.”

Emily nodded and sent the girl a quick smile. “Good, ok
ay, we need to move. You two head to the back of the park to the fence. There’s a spot that has been cut. Go through it and find a house to hide in. Don’t come out until the shooting stops for at least an hour. GO!”

The girl flashed a fast look back at the school before yanking on the woman's arm and pulling her away deeper in to the field. Alex, Emily, Dara and Lisa, who had hidden her gun again moved quickly towards the school. They saw the last group of captives disappear through the door and only one guard left standing outside. He turned from the door and scanned the yard before catching sight of the four of them. His face was filled with a scowl and he used his
shotgun to motion them forward before scanning the field behind them for anyone else.

There was only the five of them left outside the building that Dara could see
, and the door to the school was closed. She barely whispered “I’ve got this one” to the others. As Alex and Emily passed the guard, Dara who was next in line, pretended to stumble and just like Lisa had, brought the gun she had hidden behind her back around and pressed it hard against the guard’s chest before firing. It would have worked perfectly except that he had his finger on the trigger of the shotgun that he was pointing in the air and he spasmed and pulled the trigger. The sound of the shot was huge and the girls looked in horror at each other as the guard lay dead at their feet.

Alex broke first and grabbed
Dara, “Doesn’t matter! There’s four left. Hide your gun, Dara. We go through the door looking scared and panicked. Cry if you can!” She turned to Emily who had her hand on the door and nodded.

Emily pulled the door open and they all put on scared expressions. They ran inside and had only gone five feet before another guard rounded a corner and aimed a rifle at them. All the girls dropped to the floor and held their hands up. Their terrified expressions made the guard discount them as threats and he re
-aimed this rifle at the door they had just come through while yelling at them.

“What happened? Where’s Johnny? I heard his shotgun go off!”

Alex took the lead and said in a pitiful voice,

“I don’t know! He was holding the door open for us and he shot at something in the field. We just dove in and the door slammed behind us.”

She put enough whine in her voice that the guard shoved her out of the way in disgust and headed to the outside door. Alex spun away on her knees and took a quick look down the hall for more guards. When she saw it was empty she spun back around and pulled her gun from under her sweater. She steadied her breathing and lined up her shot. The bullet went straight to its mark through the guards back and destroyed his heart, killing him instantly.

As soon as he fell, Dara, Emily and Lisa were on their feet and pulling Alex up. She stuffed her gun back into her waist band and they pelted down the hallway. When they got to the corner they slid to a stop and peeked around it both ways. There was no one in sight but they could hear people crying and making noise to the left.

They pulled back from the corner and Emily looked at the others.

“They’re in the gym.”

Dara nodded. “Makes sense, there’s no windows in there so it’s a good place to lock them down in. Three guards left if no one else came. What do we do now?”

Lisa shrugged. “We go to the gym.”

Alex shook her head.

“They’re going to notice us just strolling in through the main doors. Not only
that, our moms are in there. As soon as they see us, they’ll give us away. They won’t be able to help it. They think we’re in California!”

“Ok
ay, so we don’t go in those doors. We use the girl’s locker room to go through to the gym. The door from there leads to the small hallway where the equipment room is. We stay low and just slip around the corner and into the crowd. It sounds pretty noisy in there so if anyone we know spots us we just try and shut them up fast.”