“Victor, not you. That’s a suicide run. Let me do it, at least I can outrun them.” said Leo.
“No, Leo, I need you here. I need you to pick up Max and run with him if I don’t make it. If none of us make it, I need you to take him and run. Farther and faster than you’ve ever run before.”
“Vic, don’t talk like that,” said Marshall.
“I’m not; I’m just covering all my bases.” I said.
“We’re not even sure if Frye was telling the truth,” I said, knowing he wouldn’t lie about something I could so easily check.
“There’s a chance that Jimmy and Tom are going to come back and say they couldn’t find anything.”
“We’ve got work to do. I suggest we get to the preparations. Best case scenario, we pick up the ammo tomorrow afternoon.”
“Anyone else have any ideas? I’m all ears. This is a plan I’ve had in my head for weeks. It’ll work. We have enough ammo, we have enough shooters, we can do this.”
We spent the rest of that day preparing. John took care of the ammo dumps; Marshall welded the plow blade to the front of the big rig. Leo took charge of stepping off lines of fire, and marking them in the grass with white spray paint every hundred yards from the main house. I went from spot to spot, but I was in the workshop down by the barn when I heard Tom come over the radio.
“Jimmy’s dead. There’s so many, they go one for a mile or more. I lost count at a thousand, and I hadn’t even counted a tenth.”
“Good work Tom, now get back here and let’s get ready to kill them.” Bookbinder replied.
“I can’t come back, Lieutenant. I’m bit. I can feel it taking over. I’m parked on the side of the road, I’d like permission to take my pickup and drive it right into them. I think I could take a hundred with me. I’d like to try; I don’t want to end up like one of them.”
“Tom, are you sure you’re gonna turn?” I asked.
“Yes sir, Mr. Tookes, I’m sure.”
“Tom, do what you have to. You’re a hero, getting us this information probably saved all of our lives.”
36. The Beginning
By late afternoon we’d finished all of our preparations, and the waiting game began. I spent about an hour playing Frisbee with Max and the other small kids in the back yard. For Max, it was about keeping life kind of normal. For me, it was time that I could just be Daddy, and not be in charge of the safety and welfare of over three hundred people. A little after five, Bookbinder came to get me.
“Max, can you stay here for a few minutes and keep playing Frisbee? Daddy has to go talk to Mr. Bookbinder.” I said.
“Daddy, are you talking about all the bad guys coming?” he asked, his face turned up and glowing in the evening sun.
“Yeah, Max monster. There are lots of bad guys coming, but don’t worry, Mister John, Miss Leo, Uncle Marshall and I will make sure they don’t hurt us.”
“I like Mr. John. He talks funny.”
“I think so too!” I laughed. “He has an accent. An accent is when someone says words differently than we do. He thinks we sound funny! How crazy is that?” We both had a good laugh.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes. Stay right here.”
I walked off a bit with Charlie, around the corner to the front of the house. Three of the locals were working on boarding up the windows using fence rails bolted all the way through thick brick walls. They had a generator running to power the drills they were using. We moved off to the side, behind the huge three hundred year old boxwood bushes.
“They’re about eight miles out. They didn’t even slow down going through Culpeper. It’s about time to get this show on the road, they’re making roughly four miles an hour.”
“Alright, Charlie. Let’s get everyone wrapped up and get some food into them. It’s going to be a long night.”
“Leo,” I spoke into my radio. “Can you come to the front of the house? It’s time.”
“On my way, Tookes.” She replied, and was standing in front of me before the radio static died.
“Have you eaten anything Leo? You’re going to burn a lot of calories; I need you on your A-game.” I said, concern clearly prevalent in my voice.
“Walk with me to the kitchen; I’ll grab something to throw in my backpack.”
“Charlie, can you get the word out that its time? Discretely, we don’t need to frighten the children.”
Leo and I walked back around the house to where Max was playing. I resisted the urge to hold her hand; I wasn’t quite ready for it to be public knowledge. Anyone that knew us, knew that we were developing feelings for each other, in the old days we would have called it dating. These days our idea of a date was clearing and looting a convenience store. Times change.
“Max, it’s time to go inside buddy. Can you take your Frisbee and put it in the toy-box on the porch? Then go find Grandma, please.”
“You got it, Dad.” he said.
Leo and I continued on around the house towards the kitchens outside door. About halfway there, we stopped and I took her hand. “Leo, don’t do anything crazy. Try to get their attention and lead them off, but if it’s not working, don’t be a hero out there by yourself.”
I leaned forward and kissed her, which she returned more passionately than I expected. We kissed for several minutes, enjoying some quiet time together before we both had to go to work. At last we broke the kiss, and walked inside the kitchen.
Inside, my mother was a whirlwind. She had almost a hundred and fifty bags laid out. In each, she had a sandwich with thinly cut grilled deer, roasted red pepper, lettuce and mustard. There was a rolled oat granola bar, and a bottle of water. To this day, I have no idea how she managed to bake that much bread in twelve hours. There’s no way she slept. I handed Leo one of the bags.
“Vic, I made this one for Leo. She needs more calories than you; you’re still a little pudgy.” She said with a smile on her face.
Mom handed Leo a much heavier looking bag. “Here you go, honey. You be safe out there. Don’t let Vic get you in trouble.”
“Vic, here’s yours, two granola bars and a bottle of water.”
I knew that this was my mother’s way of saying, ‘I don’t have a sandwich for everyone, so I gave yours to Leo’. I gave her a hug and said, “I love you, Mom. You’re amazing, none of this would happen without you.” I walked Leo down to the road, where I kissed her one more time and hopped into the big truck Marshall had attached the old plow blade to. She was off in a flash; trails of leaves swirling in her wake. She was getting faster. I followed her purple and green swirling aura, and discovered that I could ‘see’ her aura, even when she stopped running, somewhere between six and seven miles away.
“Interesting.” I said out loud to myself.
I focused on Max’s aura, and spun around, and saw his beautiful pale blue light coming from the main house. John was down by the barn; Marshall was up at the carriage house. Bookbinder was several hundred yards out behind the house; I wondered what he was doing there.
I started up the big truck, and let it idle long enough for the brakes to air up. Once I could release the brakes, I pulled the huge rig out onto the road, and backed it about a quarter mile down to the bridge.