On the Run (16 page)

My glance at the wooden silhouettes affirmed that at some time
someone
used real bullets. I’d heard about white-supremacy groups practicing war games in isolated places. So I came right out and asked.

“Were your folks into white-supremacy stuff?”

He turned and looked at me, his expression surprised. “Jock and Jessie racist? No way. They were truly passionate about civil rights in their younger days. Though I suppose, after they went paranoid, they were suspicious of people with different skins. Or creeds or anything else. It was an equal-opportunity paranoia. They were distrustful of everyone.” He rested the paint gun against his leg. “Actually, I was surprised they let this group come on the place. But I guess they figured they needed more live bodies than just each other for moving targets to practice on.”

Strange people.

Frank pulled the trigger several more times. Most of the paintballs missed the tree target, but a green one finally splatted it. “Bull’s-eye!” he yelled.

Abilene picked up one of the guns and inspected it curiously. “How do you aim it?”

“They don’t have a sight to aim through, like a real gun has. You just point it in the general direction and pull the trigger. You put the paintballs in that container on top—” He pointed to the funnel-shaped thing on the gun she held. “And it feeds them into the gun. The propulsion power comes from the pressurized canister on the bottom.”

I inspected one of the canisters. It was marked with the chemical symbol for carbon dioxide.

“Some of the canisters use pressurized air instead of carbon dioxide. They had a machine for refilling them at the rental place. I don’t know if these carbon dioxide ones are refillable or not.”

Abilene stepped around him. “How do you do it? Like this?” She pointed the paint gun in the direction of the woods, pulled the trigger, and splatted a bush. She gave a surprised grin. “Hey, that is kind of fun!”

She pulled the trigger several more times, rapidly catching on how to hit a target and honing in on a tree trunk with a couple of solid egg-yellow splats. She grinned again.

“Does it hurt if you’re hit with one?” I asked.

“It stings a little if a paintball makes a direct hit on the skin, and it can make quite a bruise or welt if you’re shot up close. But it’s not deadly dangerous. Though a direct hit in the eye can be really bad. But that’s what the face masks are for. The stuff washes off easy. It’s water soluble. And it isn’t poisonous or anything. I heard once you could even eat it and it wouldn’t hurt you. Not that it’s my idea of a good snack.”

“How far do they shoot?” Abilene asked.

“I’m not sure. At least two or three hundred feet, I’d guess. I think these guns may be a little more high-powered than those at the rental place.”

Frank stepped back into the shed and pulled a face mask over his head. “C’mon, put on a mask and we’ll give it a try,” he urged Abilene. He picked up a flag from a barrel in a corner. “I’ll plant this over by the woods, and whoever captures it first wins!”

Abilene slipped on a mask, and, like kids discovering a new game, they gleefully headed for the woods. Frank planted the flag at the edge of the clearing, where the faint trail took off through the woods. Abilene ran about a hundred feet to the left. Frank did the same on the right.

“First one gets hit is out!” Frank shouted as he disappeared into the brush.

“What does the winner get?” I yelled.

“Satisfaction!”

I didn’t see how either of them could ever hit the other in the dense woods, but I heard a
splat
as Abilene’s first paintball thumped something in Frank’s direction.

“Missed me!” Frank yelled jubilantly.

I wasn’t certain how I felt about this. Grown people shooting paintballs at each other?

Then I shrugged. Why not? I grabbed a mask and a paintball gun, checked to see the funnel was full, and headed for the woods.

17

I sneaked around to the right, circling Frank’s position, and slipped into the brush. They didn’t know I was in the game, which perhaps gave me an unfair advantage, but I decided to go with the old philosophy that all’s fair in love and war. Especially paintball war.

My game plan was to work my way around to a point farther down the trail, from where I could see the planted flag. Then, when either of them got close to it, I’d blast ’em. I took tentative aim at a clump of leaves up ahead, just for practice, and astonished myself by dead-eying it with a pink blob. Hey, that
was
kind of fun!

After snagging my mask on bushes and getting whopped with one branch after another, I changed tactics. I slung the carrying strap on the paint gun over one shoulder, got down on my belly, and slithered under most of the brush. Being small, scrawny, and semi-invisible does have its occasional advantages. When I came to the trail, I cautiously got to my feet. Yes, there was the flag some twenty-five feet back toward the clearing around the house.

I couldn’t see anyone, but somewhere in the brush I heard the occasional click of a trigger, the whoosh of a firing gun, sometimes the splat of a paintball hitting something. Then, there he was, Frank sneaking up on the flag!

I fired and then ducked so he couldn’t see me. I missed, but I heard him get off several shots in quick succession. Not in my direction. He still thought Abilene was his only opponent.

I parted the bushes carefully. He was within three or four feet of the flag now.
Splat!
I got him, Pepto-Bismol pink right on the shoulder.

“Okay, I’m out,” Frank yelled. He sounded mildly disgruntled. “You got me.”

A moment later Abilene appeared from the opposite direction, ready to claim her victory.
Splat!
I got her too!

She whirled in a semicircle. “Hey, what’s going on? Who’s shooting with pink?”

I stood up and pushed through the bush. They both stared.

“Meet the champ,” I said. I picked up the flag and waved it triumphantly as I marched out of the woods.

“Hey, that’s not fair,” Abilene protested. “We didn’t even know you were in the game.”

“Foul!” Frank cried. “Illegal player on the field!”

“I didn’t hear anyone telling me I couldn’t play, and I have the flag, don’t I? And I don’t see any paintball blobs on me—”

I didn’t get to finish my victory proclamation before a barrage of paintballs hit me. Yellow blobs like raw egg yolks. Green blobs like slimy pond scum. I retaliated, of course, with pink blobs of my own and a satisfying number of hits.

“New game!” Abilene yelled. She grabbed the flag and headed down the trail with it.

“I think I’ll retire winner and let you two battle it out,” I said graciously, with as much dignity as is possible with a yellow blob decorating my derriere and both green and yellow spread across my front.

“Oh no, you don’t,” they chorused in unison. “You’re in.”

They ganged up on me in the next game, of course. The aim of the game wasn’t capturing the flag now; it was Get Ivy. And get Ivy they did. I came out looking as if I’d tangled with a raw omelet of moldy eggs. Feeling like it too, with goopy stuff in my hair and soaking through my shirt and running down my neck. They’d have let me quit then, I think, but my competitive ire was aroused.

This time I grabbed the flag and planted it in a small clearing farther back in the woods. “Two hits before you’re out this time!” I decreed. “No cheating!”

Something whizzed by my head and splatted the bush behind me. I got off a quick shot and dodged behind a tree. I peered through the bushes, but my opponents had instantly vanished. I knew better than to make directly for the flag. This called for a sneak attack.

I did the belly thing again, squirming along the ground using my elbows for propulsion, pausing every few feet to listen for giveaway rustles. The problem was, down on the ground, I quickly lost my bearings. The trees and brush all looked alike. That slimy pond was back here somewhere. I could just see myself slithering into a sea of green scum by mistake . . .

Cautiously I stood up. There, a flash of blue through the bushes! Abilene’s blouse. I whipped up the gun and got off a shot.

I heard it hit, along with an
oof
of surprise.

Odd. That didn’t sound like Abilene. Had I hit Frank instead? No, he was wearing a tan shirt. I stood there, puzzled. I didn’t want to say anything and give away my position. I saw a flicker of movement and shot again.

I didn’t hear the paintball hit, but suddenly something crashed through the brush, branches breaking, footsteps pounding.

“Abilene?” I called tentatively. “Frank?”

One paintball lobbed me from the left. Another hit me from the right. Neither came from the direction of the crashing brush.

“Okay, you got me,” I yelled. “I’m out. But I hit someone. Who was it?”

No answer, neither of them wanting to give away their position. Upright, my sense of direction returned, and I headed for the flag. Around me, the bushes rustled as Frank and Abilene jockeyed for position. Abilene’s defeat came first.

“Okay, I’m hit twice.” She came out of the brush, plastered with the green of Frank’s paintballs from this and the earlier games.

He appeared a minute later dripping yellow goo but smiling like a kid who’s just gotten away with spitballing the teacher. “Didn’t I tell you it was fun?”

I examined them both. More recent blobs had obliterated my earlier pink hits on both of them. So where was that last hit?

“Which one of you took off running when I hit you a couple minutes ago?” I asked.

“Not me.”

“Not me.”

“Then who?”

I led the way back to where I’d fired the last shot, then to approximately where I’d blobbed someone. The ground was dry here, no footprints visible, but there were shards from my broken paintball on the ground.

Frank laughed. “You probably terrorized some poor deer into running for his life. There are lots of them out here.”

“And when he gets back to the other deer he’ll be ostracized because of the big pink blob between his eyes,” Abilene suggested. “He’ll probably have to go see the local deer psychiatrist because he’s so traumatized.”

Obviously they were not taking my claim seriously. Was it possible I’d mistaken a deer for a human? Misidentification was how deadly hunting accidents happened. Hunter mistakes a person for a deer, and I’d simply done the reverse. But I’d been so certain I’d seen that flash of blue, not once but twice, and I’d never heard of a deer wearing blue.

“C’mon, let’s go get something to drink,” Frank said. “There’s frozen juice, canned juice, bottled juice, you can have your pick.”

We trooped out of the woods. Frank seemed in high spirits now, and Abilene was actually laughing, which was good to hear. Okay, I had to admit it, splatting paintballs was fun, even if we did all look as if we’d been in a frat house food fight. I shrugged off the matter of my mysterious target. Maybe there was a pink-splatted deer out there somewhere thinking,
This
is it. I gotta get out of this redneck country.

“Come on over to the house as soon as you get cleaned up,” Frank said.

I looked at Abilene, drippy with blobs. “We’ll have to run into town first. Abilene doesn’t have any clothes to change into.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

I suspected that puzzled him. A woman without a closetful of clothes
?
But instead of asking questions he surprised me by saying to Abilene, “You’re not much taller than Jessie. Maybe something of hers would fit you.”

Abilene looked shocked. “Oh, I couldn’t—”

“Yes, you could,” I interrupted firmly. At my age, you’ve learned to be practical about these things. A dead woman’s clothes are just as wearable as any others.

Frank echoed that practicality. “In fact, c’mon over and take anything you want. I may be able to make use of some of Jock’s stuff myself, but I’ll have to get rid of Jessie’s things sooner or later anyway, so you might as well have whatever you can use. I don’t think the lawyer will make a fuss about my giving away a few clothes.”

“Wouldn’t your wife like to have some of your mother’s things?” Abilene asked.

“No, Mikki isn’t going to want any of them.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Maybe just a pair of jeans, then, if there are any,” Abilene agreed hesitantly.

I changed out of my paintball-daubed clothes, sloshed a wet washcloth over my hair, and we went over to the house. When I knocked, Frank yelled at us to come on in. Abilene took off her splattered shoes. She’d wrapped a towel around her shirt so the paintball residue wouldn’t get on anything in the house.

“In here. Down the hallway on the left,” he called.

I decided there was no point in telling him I was already familiar with the bedroom. I took a quick peek toward the gun cabinet when we entered the room. It was closed now, but the crossbow was still leaning beside it.

The large closet was divided into his and hers sections, but neither was crowded with clothes. If Jessie had ever been one for glamour, she’d abandoned it when she left Hollywood. What Frank pulled out of the closet and tossed on the bed were jeans and other work or casual pants, sweatshirts, hooded and plain. Denim and khaki shirts, plain cotton blouses, and T-shirts. No Hollywood sequins here.

“Take whatever you can use.” Frank added a plaid jacket to the growing pile.

“Actually, there isn’t room in the motor home for a lot of clothes,” I said reluctantly. I would’ve liked to see Abilene take advantage of this largesse, but space was definitely limited.

Frank paused. “You know, now that I think about it, there’s no point in the two of you being crowded into that little motor home and the house sitting here empty. Why don’t you just move in here instead? There are two bedrooms upstairs, so you can each have a room of your own, and this bedroom will still be available if I need it.”

I didn’t hesitate. I hadn’t minded living in the little motor home these past months. By now I even felt a comfortable affection for it. The size eliminates a lot of housekeeping chores. But the idea of temporarily spreading out in a real house made me feel a little giddy. All that space!