“What the…?” A man with a two by four with a few rusty nails protruding from the end was the one who couldn’t quite find the last word he was searching for. He stood with the others, because all of them were standing now. As a group, they watched the yellow suits calmly apply the brakes on their bikes.
From a distance, maybe from the top of the bridge, one would have seen the tallest of the yellow suits dismount from the bike and calmly unstrap a pack tied to the back of the bicycle. The suit walked to the foot of the bridge, approached the circle of men, setting the bag slowly on the ground. From the height of the bridge, the yellow suit, looking something like an astronaut or a technician trying to control a viral outbreak, bent down, opened the bag, and began fishing around for something inside it. The other suit waited with the bikes. The men stood and stared with their weapons in anticipation…
In a movie, the music would have built to a crescendo, but this was not a movie. It was real life. When the yellow suit stood up with something strange in its hands, the men screamed, broke, and ran. They scattered in all directions, running for cover like men chased by bees, or devils… or death. They never looked back.
With her head down, looking at the package in her hands, Veronica had missed the sight of the armed men fleeing in panic. Now, finding herself alone, she reached up and undid the helmet of her fallout suit and removed it, feeling the cold air slip across her face. She opened the box of graham crackers she held in her hands and carefully tore open the interior packaging. Removing a cracker, she took a bite. She slipped the cardboard flap back in its slot and dropped the box back in the bag, and, throwing the bag across her shoulders, she walked back to Stephen.
“What was that about, Mom?”
“I guess they weren’t hungry,” Veronica said. “Besides, they weren’t going to stop us with a silly board with nails in it!”
She put her helmet back on and mounted her bike, and she and Stephen rode down into the highway leading into Staten Island.
CHAPTER 28
The man struggled gamely, but he was stuck fast. He’d fallen through the boards of the dilapidated bridge, and the wood had given way just enough to bite into his leg but not enough to allow it to wriggle free. He didn’t have the leverage or the angle to pull his leg out. He was looking at the leg as if deep in thought, perhaps determining whether he had other choices. He ran his hand along the back of his neck and then over a few day’s growth of beard.
Hidden in the trees, Lang could see that the man’s ankle had become wedged in the supporting cross braces of the old footbridge, and that he was unable to reach down through the broken boards to free himself no matter what he tried.
Peter watched along with the others as the man struggled, and he noted aloud that the man had better find a way to get loose. “If he doesn’t manage to free himself, he’s surely going to die…” Peter paused. “…if not from the injury or starvation, then from some group of troublesome passersby looking for gear, guns, or just trouble. They’ll eventually come upon him.”
“We need to help him,” Lang told Peter, looking at the older man with a face that betrayed both fear and compassion.
“I don’t know, Lang,” Peter said. He stared, unblinking at the man on the bridge. He could not help but see both the metaphor… the bridge itself… and the danger. “Helping him could put us all at risk. We could be found ou—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Peter!” Natasha snapped, interrupting him. “What if that was you stuck there on that bridge?”
“Well,” Peter said, “sure, I would want someone to help me, but I’d also not expect it. I’d understand if they couldn’t do it without great risk to themselves. No one deserves the heroic, Natasha.”
“Still, I’d like to go and check on him, Peter,” Lang said.
“You can’t go, Lang.” The old man looked at the youth, his skin pale and beginning to look almost transparent. “You can’t even lift up your arm! How are you going to help this man get free with one arm?” Peter paused, staring at Lang. Then he looked down for a beat before adding, “No… If anyone is going, I’m going.”
“Peter, be reasonable,” Lang said. “Who’s going to protect Natasha and Elsie if you get shot out there? It has to be me. I’ll go.”
The two men continued their argument, and as they did, Natasha’s eyes grew wide, and she knelt down as if she needed to inspect her boot. She looked up, then left and then right, and before either Lang or Peter could say anything to stop her, she was sprinting full speed towards the bridge. She stayed low to the ground, maintaining maximum cover as she ran.
Her actions caused the others to stop in their tracks, and then spring into action. Without a word, Peter raised the rifle and balanced the barrel on the small branch just to his left. He adjusted the iron sights, allowed a bit for windage and the expected drop, and began to steady his breath, willing himself to slow his heartbeat.
If this man makes a wrong move, Peter thought, I’ll drop him.
Without taking his eye away from the sights, Peter whispered to Lang, who was mentally already on his way, leaning in anticipation, to take the .22 Marlin and run to the low hill to the northeast.
“Stay under cover,” Peter raised his voice. “That gun is good, as-is, from seventy-five to one hundred meters. Keep your eyes on the woods and watch the dirt road as it comes around that bend. If anyone, anyone at all approaches…” He let the implications hang in the air and whispered quietly under his breath, to himself as much as to Lang, “Don’t miss.”
Natasha reached the old, decrepit bridge, and the man finally saw her. He slowly lowered his right hand, moving as if he were testing her, determining whether she was going to ask him to stop — and she saw that he had a Glock pistol strapped to his good leg.
“Wait!” Natasha shouted, with authority. “Don’t do it! If you move, and your hand gets near that gun, your head will explode. Trust me. You are in the sights of someone who is very, very good. Just… please… don’t be stupid. I’m here to help you, and I’m unarmed.”
She turned around slowly with her hands up, and lifted her coat so that he could see she did not have a gun of her own.
The man stared at Natasha for a second. Without blinking, without giving any indication on his face of his thinking one way or the other about anything, his hand opened up very slowly, and swiveled at the wrist to show whoever she was talking about… whoever was pointing a gun at him… that he had no intention of doing anything stupid. Methodically, he put both hands flat down on the wood surface of the bridge, and then paused, just staring at Natasha without a word.
“That’s good. I see that you are clever,” Natasha said, moving again toward the man. “I’m going to climb under the bridge and see if I can get your ankle free. If I were you, even if it hurts horribly and you want to scream out, I wouldn’t move very much, or make any noise.”
The man didn’t respond at all. He just answered with his eyes, a slow blink that declared openly and plainly that he understood what this woman and her people expected of him. That he’d been given a kind of trust.
With that, Natasha hurried down the embankment, and, near the edge of the tiny stream, she climbed upward into the ancient trusses and supports that held the weight of the old bridge.