All the Escape Committee had managed to do was prepare a signal. Occasionally they heard the thrum of helicopter engines, presumably some relief agency or other delivering supplies to Shelburne City. No helicopter had actually been seen, but next time one was heard, the committee planned to ignite a bonfire of tires taken from the cotton wagons, and hope the column of dense, thick smoke would attract attention.
It certainly seemed worth a try, Nick thought, even though one of the Escape Committee, a thin, intense man of late middle age who called himself Tareek Hall, insisted that this was only one of many death camps, that white America had chosen this moment to exterminate all blacks, that this was all a well-planned worldwide conspiracy. Tareek seemed very happy when he spoke his theory aloud. It obviously gave him great satisfaction to know that millions of people wanted to kill him. Even paranoids have real enemies, Nick told himself.
Nick was told that the camp’s assets in any future conflict consisted of three handguns that had so far escaped the deputies’ attention, an assortment of knives, clubs, hammers, and other improvised hand weapons, plus the services of about twenty veterans of the armed services, aged from their mid-twenties to their sixties, none of whom had ever seen combat. A number of the refugees were country people who had been hunting all their lives and knew how to shoot a rifle, but few of these had even been in the military, and none had fired a shot in anger.
And there were about four remaining gangsters who, as they had arrived with their families, had not been shipped out like the other gangsters. They could be counted on for aggression if nothing else, though one was reluctant to surrender his pistol for the common good.
The Escape Committee had at least made a survey of the guards: which ones would talk, which could be bribed, which would respond only with anger, with blows, or by racking a round into his shotgun. Two guards patrolled the back of the camp at all times. One on each side. Two in front. All were armed with shotguns, machine pistols, or assault rifles. Any of these weapons could perpetrate a massacre. Three or four deputies manned the roadblocks on the highway to either side of the camp. Those four openly displayed scoped hunting rifles that could pick off anyone at long range. The roadblock guards were, in their way, more dangerous than the men patrolling the perimeter, because they could kill from a distance and because there was no way to reach them. Two of these men moved to the camp at night and mainly patrolled around the back, where an attempt to escape to the woods was more likely. The seven argumentative men of the Escape Committee, after vetoing a lengthy series of complicated proposals, had finally thrown up their hands and decided to attempt a mass escape. They’d try to cut the wire, or with the sheer weight of the inmates bash down a part of the fence, and then everyone would pour out of the camp and run into the woods.
It didn’t sound promising to Nick, and he said so. Nobody knew the country. They’d be running blind into the woods with killers firing at their backs. By the time any escapees got through the woods, the deputies could have a whole line of men waiting on the other side of the woods and catch them between two fires. No one knew how large the woods was, or how possible it was for people to evade capture once they were in the trees. Nobody knew of an escape route once they were away from the immediate area. There was no transportation out of the parish even if they did evade the deputies.
“I don’t like it,” Nick said.
“What else can we do?”
“I don’t know,” Nick said. He rubbed the old wound on his arm. “I don’t know.” You need a rear guard, he thought. That’s what his father would tell him. Bunch of civilians in flight, you’ve got to have soldiers who stay behind fighting to make sure they get away. But you can’t have a rear guard armed with three pistols and some clubs. That wasn’t a rear guard—that didn’t even achieve the dignity of suicide. It was pure absurdity. Even if the rear guard were brave, even if they made up their minds to sacrifice their lives, they’d last only a few minutes, and then the horrible pursuit would begin, the massacre would stretch over miles, armed men pursuing helpless people over the countryside.
We’ll need to get their weapons, Nick thought. Then we can put up a fight.
“They’re punks,” Nick said, more to himself than to anyone else. “Punks,” he repeated. “Punks back down when you show fight.”
“Maybe some of them will. But some of those redneck bastards learned to shoot at their granddaddy’s knee. The same place they learned to hate niggers.”
“Let me think,” Nick said. He wished his father were here. “How do they get food in?” he asked.
“They come every two-three days. They bring less food all the time, and never enough, so they can sell us food for money sometimes. But they bring more guards along with the food, and they come armed. March a few of us out of the camp to take the food, then march them back in. The guards hardly ever come in the camp themselves.”
That seemed the best chance for getting weapons, Nick thought. Swarm through the gate and bowl those crackers over. They would take casualties, but that was going to happen no matter what.
“When did they last bring food?” Nick asked.
“Yesterday.”
So he probably had a while, Nick thought, to let that plan mature. But not long. Not longer than overnight.
“Have we got a map?” he asked.
Where could you hide? Nick wondered. Where—assuming you had soldiers—could you hide them?
Back in the woods, certainly. Once you got back beyond the bulldozed area, the trees were relatively open, you could even maneuver your men back there.
The parking lot. Eighty or a hundred cars parked helter-skelter by the side of the road. You could hide people in the cars—if you could first get them out of the camp—then have them jump out from ambush. And the cars provided mobility, too. If he could get people into the cars, they could drive to the roadblocks and fight the riflemen at close range.
Nearby buildings. There was an old tumbledown church—literally tumbled down in the quakes—less than half a mile south of the camp. If he could hide soldiers there, he could enfilade the southernmost of the two roadblocks.
The bar ditch by the side of the road. It didn’t provide much cover, but it was better than nothing. And the camp itself. When all was said and done, there was a surprising amount of cover in the camp. Tents, blankets, and opaque plastic sheeting could hide people from sight even if they wouldn’t stop a bullet. And slit trenches could be dug secretly, inside the tents, to provide cover. The slit trenches would fill with water, with the water table as high as it was, but getting wet was better than getting killed. It might be a good idea to dig slit trenches under all the tents. Hide the children there, till it was time to run for the woods.