“Where you goin’?” he asked.
I said, “We have to sneak over to one of the houses nearby and locate kayaks or a boat of some kind. We were going to tell you goodbye and how much we appreciate your help.”
“Not so fast,” he said, standing on weak legs and limping to the door. He pointed along the shoreline. “There’s a trail down there. It takes you to the next house along the shore. Go there. Use the side entrance to the garage and see if they still have their kayaks stored inside. Probably do. Don’t go inside the house. Mom, Dad, and three kids died in there. Just leave them be, not that you could stand to go inside with the smell. I got a whiff of it when I went to check on them a few days ago.”
“I’ll go take a look,” I said to Sue. “Why don’t you try to make a good meal for all of us?”
The little trail took me a hundred yards along the shoreline to the next house. The side door to the garage was padlocked, but the hasp had been pried off and hung limply. I assumed the old man had done it. Nothing else seemed out of place. I told my nose to stop sniffing for decomposing bodies, but it refused to cooperate.
With the side door open, plenty of light streamed inside the garage. There were six kayaks, each stacked neatly on a rack made of two-by-fours against the rear. Two kayaks caught my eye. They were longer, slimmer, and had rudders operated by the user’s feet. I hefted one to my shoulder and carried it to the rocks at the bottom of the hillside, above the tangle of trees, and debris at the high tide mark.
The other soon joined it. I selected a pair of double-ended paddles, and two lifejackets, then I made sure the door was pulled closed in case the old man needed anything else from inside. I followed the path back to the other house.
Sue was stirring something on the stove when a buzz of sound interrupted. I turned to look behind me where the sound came from just as the old man pointed at the small windows and said softly, “Company.”
Two men and a woman were moving down the driveway, each holding a rifle. They didn’t look like bikers, at least none wore the garb of the bikers. She was heavy-set, the men were much the same. They moved slowly, their eyes taking everything in. That is, they looked at everything but inside the small windows where we were.
They couldn’t have missed the fresh tire tread imprints in the soft dirt. They expected to find people, expected to sneak up on them. One tire track from our motorcycle entering with none returning to the road, recently made, meant the rider was still in the house. One person. Easy pickings.
The old man reached for a Winchester rifle that could have been used in every western movie ever made. I said, reaching for the rifle I’d taken off the biker, “Let me talk to them.”
He frowned, then nodded as he aimed.
“I don’t want any trouble,” I called, not wishing to warn them there were three of us. Sue had her shotgun ready, and while the distance was too great to hit them, the sheer amount of noise should be enough for rational thinkers to flee.
They pulled to a stop, consulted with each other briefly, then one man turned to face me. “We’ve talked it over. If you come out with your hands up and nothing in them, we’ll let you leave.”
The woman giggled, an evil sound that edged the two men a few cautious steps closer. The old man at my side said, “You tried. I’ll take the one on the right.”
As I raised my rifle, the woman lifted a military-style rifle hidden from us. It had been at her side. She sprayed thirty or forty bullets in our direction in one long burst. The men beside her peeled away and dived into the weeds, all but disappearing as they raised their weapons and fired. Both Sue and I ducked from the firing of the machine-guns, while I quickly realized that not one bullet had come through the small windows. None of the glass had broken.
They didn’t know where we were and all the slugs had torn up the first floor of the house instead of the basement.
Both the old man and Sue fired at almost the same time. I fought to steady the scope until I found the man on the left aiming his weapon lower. He now knew where we were.
I shot him just above his left eye. I’d been aiming lower, but my hands were shaking. The old man had shot the other man, and the woman had ejected the magazine in her gun and inserted another. Sue put her shotgun up to the window and fired again. Pumped and fired. Pumped and fired. The old man got into a position to shoot the old thirty-thirty. He fired once.
He said, “Well if that doesn’t bring the whole damned city here, nothing will. It’s like sirens on firetrucks. Everybody’s got to go see what’s happening when they hear them. By dark, there’ll be ten more bodies out there. You two, get out of here while you can.”
“Come with us,” Sue begged.
He shook his head. “Can’t do it, bad leg and all. Besides, my heart pills run out in two more days, and without them, I’m done anyway. I might make it three or four days, or just put the barrel of this in my mouth and end it without suffering the pain that’s coming my way. Sorry, kids. Make a break for it while you can. Sit out there in the bay until dark and good luck.”
“Maybe we can get your pills from a pharmacy,” I said.
He shook his head. “They’re stripped bare or burned. I went into town and looked.”
Sue gave him a hug and whispered something in his ear. I shook his hand and escorted Sue down to the rocks and the kayaks, almost pulling her along. We donned lifejackets, tossed our few belongings inside the footwell where they might stay dry, and pushed the long, narrow boats into the water. I held Sue’s while she adjusted to the tricky balance required to keep them upright, then I adjusted her seat to fit her short legs. When she had the idea, a push sent her fifty feet from shore. She turned back to watch me.
I managed to climb in without tipping it over, but the bottom got scraped as it settled, and I had to use the paddle pressed to the mud to get it moving. When it did, the boat moved side to side with each stroke and advanced hardly any distance.
“Reach back and put the rudder down, silly.”
Sue was grinning. I did as she suggested. The adjustment for my long legs was too short, but the rudder in the water solved most of the problem. If the boat moved to my left and I wanted to go right, the rudder foot-peddles helped. A few more strokes and we were a hundred feet from shore.
We kept going, using the paddles slowly so we didn’t tire, and we didn’t go near the shore where anyone might shoot at us. We traveled together and talked little. I managed to adjust my seat, so my feet touched the pedals.
From behind, we heard more shooting an hour later. I recognized the crack of the old man’s rifle, but the boom of a much larger shell also sounded. We looked behind and found we’d only traveled a quarter-mile or a little more, mostly drifting and waiting for darkness to fall. On the beach, a man appeared. Then another. One shouted, “There they are.”
There was no hurry. We had hours of daylight left and I didn’t want to give anyone on the Everett side of the bay an idea we were heading in their direction, so they could meet us.
I had no doubt those behind had spotted us after the warning shout. We were so far away I was surprised I’d heard the man who said it could see us. Unless they had a fast boat and were willing to sacrifice it to the number of bullet-holes I intended to put in it if they came this way, they had better not follow.
One of them took aim and fired. A splash off to our side and a little in front of us said we needed to paddle faster and put more distance between us. Maybe we were not far enough away, after all.