“Cough that shit up.”
“Fuck, Max.”
The lightbeam glimmered off the steel as the soldier chucked his lighter to the man who held Dee and her children at gunpoint, Max catching it with his left hand, never letting the AR-15 waver in his right.
“What are you doing with them, little man?”
“Do not speak to my son.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“What do you mean?” Cole asked.
“You know exactly what I mean. Don’t you want to come with us?”
“Why don’t you leave us alone? We aren’t doing anything to you.”
Max looked up at Dee with unfiltered hatred. “Get back in the car.”
“No.”
“Get in the car or I’ll shoot you and your children in the knees and put you in there myself. You can roast healthy or you can roast with shattered kneecaps. It makes not a fucking bit of difference to me so long as I get to watch you burn.”
Dee said, “What did we ever. . .”
Max aimed the AR-15 at her left knee.
Split second choice. Reach for the Glock or speak one last time to your children.
“I love you, Naomi. I love you, Cole. No one and nothing can take that away.”
“I can,” Max said.
She drew her kids into her, Naomi quaking and crying, but she didn’t allow herself to avert her eyes from the man who was going to murder them. She stared Max down, wondering would he think of them years from now on his deathbed in a moment of clarity and regret, wondering if her eyes would always haunt him, but she doubted it as he returned the stare, a malevolent smile curling his lips, Dee’s heart in her throat.
The slug mostly decapitated Bill.
A shotgun thundered out of the woods, Max spinning toward the gunfire, several of his men falling, flashlights hitting the ground, muzzleflames spitting out of the machineguns. Dee jerked Naomi and Cole to the ground and dragged them crawling away from the Jeep toward the other side of the road, where they rolled into a ditch.
Smell of moist, rich earth. The gunfire intensifying, bullets striking the trees behind them, Dee pushing Naomi’s and Cole’s heads down, pulling Cole into her chest and speaking into his ear over the shattering noise of the firefight, “I’m right here, I’ve got you.” She couldn’t hear him crying but she could feel his body shaking.
After what seemed ages, the flurry of gunfire dissipated.
They lay in the dark, Dee staring into a wall of dirt.
Someone yelled, “Fall back.”
Footsteps crunched through the leaves—someone retreating into the woods.
A man groaned nearby, begging for help.
Three reports from a handgun.
An AR-15 answered.
The exchange went on for several minutes, and it struck Dee that the gunfire sounded like the communication of terrible birds. She was tempted to climb out of the ditch and have a look, but she couldn’t bring herself to move.
After a while, the shooting stopped altogether.
Footfalls echoed through the forest.
The man nearby pleaded to God.
Someone said, “Jim, right there.”
A machinegun ripped up the silence.
Four shotgun blasts roared back.
Footsteps moved closer to the ditch.
“Sure we got all of them?”
A woman answered, “Yeah, there were nine. I count one, two, three, four, five six. . .” She laughed. “Where do you think you’re going?” A single handgun report rang out. “And this one’s still hanging in there, too.”
“No, Liz.”
“Why?”
“Please, it hurts so bad.”
“You’re breaking my fucking heart. Why can’t I end this piece of shit?”
“Mathias wanted one alive.”
“’Kay. Driver’s dead, but I saw three others get out. Woman, couple of kids.”
“They crawled into the woods when the shooting started. May be gone by now.”
Footsteps moved across the dirt road and stopped at the edge of the ditch.
The woman yelled into the woods, “Woman and two kids? You out there? We’re the good guys, and the bad guys are dead or wishing they were.”
Dee didn’t move, not wanting to startle anyone, just said softly, “We’re right here. Underneath you.”
The woman knelt down. “Anyone hurt?”
“No.” Dee pushed herself out of the dirt and sat up. “Thank you. They were going to burn us.”
“You’re safe now.” The woman reached out, took hold of Dee’s hand. “I’m Liz.”
“Dee.”
“And who’s this?”
“This is Cole, and this is Naomi.”
“Hi, Cole. Hi, Naomi.”
Liz wore a dark, one-piece jumpsuit. Long black hair drawn back into a ponytail under her black beanie. Even squatting down, Dee could see that she was tall and fit, possessing a hard, wiry strength evident in the angular tapering of her jawline.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Liz said. “You want to come with us?”
“Where to?”
Liz smiled. “It’s not far.”
Dee held Cole’s and Naomi’s hands as they followed Liz and the others back through the woods, guided by flashlights. Two of their party lagged behind, dragging the injured soldier who they could hear groaning some distance back through the trees, Dee feeling the ache, despite everything, to attend to him. A deep-rooted hardwiring from her medical training that she wondered if she would ever lose.
A quarter mile into the woods, they stopped.
Someone said, “We’re at the perimeter.”
A voice squeaked back over a radio. “You’re clear.”
“We picked up a woman and two children. I’m going to have Liz put them in number fourteen. Have someone bring some food and water over. New clothes, too.”
“Copy that.”
Dee noticed light glinting off coils of razorwire straight ahead.
One of the men stepped on the wire where it sagged, made an opening for everyone to crawl through. They went on, and after another fifty feet, finally emerged from the woods. Under the moonlight, Dee could see a number of smaller buildings scattered through the clearing, satellites of a large, arched steel building.
Liz fell back and walked with them.
“You must be exhausted,” she said. “We’re going to put you up in a cabin. I want you to know that you’re safe here. See those?” She pointed toward opposing ends of the clearing where twenty-foot log towers stood near the edge of the forest. “There’s a heavily-armed man in each wearing night vision goggles. They’ll be watching over the clearing while you sleep.”
They were moving toward a grouping of small cabins now.
“I don’t understand. What is this place?” Dee asked.
“It’s our home.”
The cabin was clean and smaller than the shacks at the top of Togwotee Pass. There were two beds and a chair pushed under a desk and a chest of drawers. Sink and shower.
“We cut the generators off at night,” Liz said. She opened the top drawer and took out several candles and a box of matches. In a minute, candlelight warmed the room.
She came over to Dee and inspected her face.
“You’re covered in blood. I’ll make sure they bring a basin of water so you can clean up. The showers won’t run hot until morning.”
“Thank you, Liz.”
“I’ll leave you guys now. Food should be here soon.”
Dee stripped to her bra and panties, suddenly aware of how terrible she smelled. She bent down and dipped her face into the basin of water and wiped off the dried blood with a washcloth. Scrubbed her armpits, did a cursory cleaning of her arms and legs, but her hair still felt stringy and greasy.
Cole slept. Dee and Naomi sat on the other bed devouring the food that had been brought for them—a tray of fruit and cheese and crackers that tasted better than anything they’d ever eaten.
Dee stowed the Glock under the mattress. They crawled under the covers and it took some time before their body heat warmed the air between the mattress and the sheet, Dee spooning her daughter, sleep right around the corner.