Reclamation (Best Laid Plans Book 4) (43 page)

While those soldiers were doing the minimum to supply the barest needs of their charges, other soldiers had been refueling the transports and doing quick maintenance checks. In less than a half hour everything was done and the prisoners were crammed back into the trucks, packed in so tight he doubted they even had room to sit. Then the vehicles rumbled off towards Highway 6 and continued northward.

Lewis watched them go, feeling a deep sympathy for their plight and an even deeper frustration that there was nothing he could do to help them. Once the trucks had passed out of sight Jane abruptly sucked in a shuddering breath. “How soon can we hit them?”

“Soon,” he said grimly. “Let's figure it out.”

She nodded, and as he continued to watch the valley she began climbing back up the cliff.

* * * * *

Debra Rutledge nervously clutched her revolver as she sprawled in the ditch with a dozen other Newtown refugees. She didn't know what model it was, and only knew it shot .38 Special through the trial and error of fumbling through various boxes of bullets until she found ones that fit the 5-round cylinder.

Kind of sad, really. She'd spent months working at that store without ever learning about the guns on display. Clara or Max had always handled those customers. She supposed a better reason to learn would be if she actually needed to use one, like right now for instance, but she'd always expected that Fred and his deputies would protect the town.

So much for that. The only consolation she could think of there was that the man and his fellow thieves and traitors had been heading south well ahead of them and were probably dead. Which served as an unpleasant reminder that they might be joining them before too long.

Farther down the ditch a little boy was whimpering while his mother did her best to comfort him and quiet him at the same time. That probably wasn't an issue, right? After all, Deb could barely hear him over the sound of the vehicles passing down the road on the other side of the hedge, so surely anyone in the vehicles themselves wouldn't be able to hear either. And the leaves mostly blocked out the headlights, leaving them in darkness, so they wouldn't be randomly spotted. Especially if they didn't move.

For the most part the others were doing a good job of staying still and silent, although more than one was shivering. From fear, since even with the unseasonably cool weather the summer nights were warm this far south.

She was glad the townspeople had decided to split up into smaller groups to avoid detection. It had been a hard decision, and everyone felt more vulnerable without the safety of numbers, but so far it had kept them from the notice of the enemies roaming freely through the southern states. It was probably the only reason they were still alive.

Even so, she missed Clara and Max and some of her other friends from the General Store. It must be nice to have family to stick together with, although it hurt a bit that none of them had asked her to join them. For all the talk of keeping a strong community, people had gotten a lot more selfish after Fred and his cronies took off on them.

Although maybe being with this group wasn't the worst thing, since as far as she knew they were the only ones still alive. They hadn't seen anyone else from Newtown since splitting up and had no idea if anyone else had even survived. It seemed impossible, considering how many heart-stopping close encounters Deb had faced in the last few weeks.

It had been so long since they'd seen anyone but enemies, with day after day of hiding and trying to snatch hours of fitful sleep and night after night of furtive creeping, that she was starting to feel like this was all some sort of nightmare that never ended.

Or she supposed she meant the blockheads were the only
living
people they'd seen.

Just in case they were tempted to let down their guard or surrender, they stumbled across the remains of less fortunate refugees often enough to remind them of the consequences. And often enough to make Deb certain that if she did see a blockhead, she'd be able to point her revolver at him and shoot him full of holes to escape the fate that had befallen those poor people.

The trucks kept passing, the general rumble broken by the nearest ones getting louder from the left and then quieter to the right. How big was this convoy, anyway? It felt like they'd been here half the night, and even though she wasn't keeping count she could confidently say that hundreds of vehicles had passed them by this point. Those sorts of convoys weren't all that common, but the enemy made up for it by using plenty of scouts that searched even the smallest roads and lanes.

 It seemed like the entire world was filled with nothing but blockheads and the corpses of their victims.

South was supposed to mean safety! They'd pushed so hard since Newtown to escape the blockheads coming down from the north, at times with the enemy close behind and once even passed by a convoy on a nearby road as they scrambled to hide and prayed they'd be ignored. Day after day of desperate grind, fighting exhaustion and injury to get miles behind them as their bodies broke down and the pace they set never seemed to be good enough.

And then they'd started running into people fleeing the other direction, warning of enemies coming from the south. The weary refugees from Newtown could only give their warning in turn that enemies from the north weren't far behind them.

They were trapped, with nowhere to go and enemies all around. Their only hope was to head due east, away from where most of the blockheads seemed to be going, and pray that eventually they'd find a place where they'd be left alone.

Deb shouldn't have done it, but she was just so exhausted that the repetitive noise of passing enemies less than fifteen yards away eroded her alertness. The next thing she knew she was being awakened by a deafening roar from somewhere in front of her, quickly followed by screams from the rest of her group.

She lurched into a sitting position, heart pounding so hard it was almost painful, and scrambled around to find the pistol that had fallen from her limp hand. She couldn't see flashes of gunfire in the darkness but there was light trickling through the hedge, along with the whine of bullets passing overhead.

They'd been discovered.

The mother farther down the ditch was one of the people screaming, and as the gunfire continued she turned and bolted the other direction, leaving her child behind in her panic. She only made it a few steps before stumbling, and from the limp way she fell Deb had the terrible feeling she wouldn't be getting back up. The young boy, sobbing and babbling confused questions, crawled over to her and started to shake her.

Deb turned away from the awful sight and lifted her pistol, noticing that even though she wasn't the only armed person in the group she was the only one who'd thought to use her weapon. The others were either cowering in the ditch or trying to crawl away. She pointed the revolver uncertainly at the hedge, wondering if she should even bother to fire.

The blockheads were firing dozens, maybe hundreds of bullets, and so far they'd only hit one or two people. Would she have any better luck firing blind with her five?

The question became moot a moment later when the deafening racket abruptly ceased and bullets stopped flying all around her. Deb immediately took the opportunity to scuttle over and wrap her arms protectively around the boy, gently pulling him away from his mother's body.

Around them the rest of the group was starting to slip over the other side of the ditch and flee, but before she could follow she heard harsh voices shouting in an unfamiliar language beyond the hedge, then a moment later the leaves rustled with the sound of large bodies pushing through.

Almost immediately dogs burst into view and fell among the group, snapping and snarling. One of them came right for her and the child, terrible jaws snapping down on the spindly arm the boy held out protectively in front of him. The child screamed as he was torn out of her grip and thrown to the ground with the snarling animal on top of him.

Deb screamed as well and pointed the gun at the dog with trembling hands, so weak from hunger and fear that her finger barely seemed to have the strength to pull the trigger. Max had told her about pulling back the hammer with her thumbs before each shot so the trigger pull wouldn't be as difficult, but in her panic she'd completely forgotten about that until now.

The shot seemed deafening in the night and the German shepherd leapt away, snarl turning into nearly a yelp. She didn't know if she'd hit it, was terrified that she'd hit the boy by accident, but all that mattered was that it was farther away, now. She scrambled forward, screaming at the dog to stay away, and scooped up the child in one arm while she pointed her pistol one-handed.

She wasn't sure she could even pull the trigger, and her arm was trembling so much she'd probably miss even from a few feet away. And that was only if the dog didn't suddenly leap and knock her to the ground before she even had time to react.

Thankfully the animal stayed away, making a low dangerous noise in its throat. Deb kept screaming at it and slowly backed along the ditch in the other direction, struggling to keep her hold on the limp little burden she held.

More bodies had joined the dogs in crashing through the hedge, soldiers in uniforms and full body armor. They were shouting orders to the animals in their unfamiliar language, and gathering up the people in her group who the dogs had already subdued or taken down.

Maybe it was luck, or some random fluke, but she made it ten feet in the confusion without being spotted. Then she heard a crashing from the hedge directly in front of her, along with what was obviously cursing even in another language. Another soldier was fighting through clinging branches to get at her.

Deb turned and shoved the boy away, catching him by the shoulders and leaning close to his pale, frightened face. “Run!” she hissed. The boy stared at her blankly, clutching his hurt arm close to his chest. “Run, and don't hide! The dogs will find you if you hide, so run and keep running until they stop chasing you!”

He didn't seem to understand, at least until she shook him and then shoved him away. The boy stumbled, made a heart-wrenching keening sound, then turned and bolted into the darkness.

Almost at the same time the soldier broke through the branches, shining a light directly into Deb's eyes. From the way he held it she had a feeling it was attached to his rifle. She grit her teeth, thinking of the boy fleeing behind her, and raised her pistol. And just like she'd prepared to do for weeks now she pulled the trigger over and over. She wasn't even aware she was still screaming until the sound of the shots drowned out her voice.

The blockhead staggered and the blinding light swung away as a hit threw off his aim. She fired half a dozen times more, barely aware that for the last few the only noise that came from the gun was a hollow
click
.

In that silence the soldier, apparently unharmed, darted forward. She saw the light on his gun swing around wildly, and a moment later stars burst behind her eyes and pain exploded across her face.

She went down hard, mind blanking for a moment. The only thing she could think was that now she was dead. She'd either missed or her bullets hadn't been able to get through his flak jacket, or maybe they had but hadn't done enough to stop him. At any moment she expected to feel the cold jab of the rifle's muzzle against her face, then the end.

The seconds dragged by, each one an eternity, until she finally recovered her wits enough to open her eyes. She saw the soldier standing over her, gun pointed down at her chest, but he didn't fire. And he didn't fire.

She was alive. He hadn't killed her.

The man saw her open her eyes and screamed an order, taking one hand from his gun to motion wildly. He kept repeating the gesture, growing more and more angry and impatient, until Deb's dazed brain finally processed the unspoken command and she painfully pulled herself to her knees. Immediately the man moved around behind her and roughly grabbed her arms, slapping handcuffs around her wrists.

Then he hauled her to her feet as easily as if she weighed nothing, which unfortunately these days wasn't all that far from the truth, and began shoving her towards the hole he'd torn through the hedge to reach her. Deb stumbled forward with her path lit by his wildly waving light, awkward without her hands to balance her or prevent her from running into branches.

One poked her face less than an inch from her eye and made her stop and duck away with a yelp. The soldier behind her cursed impatiently and slammed his rifle into the small of her back, knocking her forward through the hedge on her knees so she tore through a dozen branches that all scraped her skin and caught at her clothes.

Deb allowed herself to be pulled back to her feet and pushed forward again, trying to focus through her pain and misery. Blood trickled down from a cut on her cheek where the man had hit her with his gun, dripping off her chin onto her filthy clothes, and her face throbbed as it began to swell. Her back throbbed with a dull pain of its own, and her skin had fiery lines of pain from the branches that had scratched her. But beyond all those distractions was the confused reality of the situation.

He was taking her prisoner. Only the blockheads didn't take prisoners. That was one of the few things all the conflicting reports agreed on, that the invaders shot any Americans they found on sight. Deb's panicked mind tried to think of any reason why she hadn't met the same fate, and all the answers were too unpleasant to contemplate.

The soldier marched her towards the back of a truck, and to her relief Deb saw that the rest of her group had also been taken prisoner, including the men. So maybe what the blockheads had in mind for her wasn't what she'd feared.

After all, they'd started out the invasion taking everyone prisoner, relocating them to massive internment camps but by all reports treating them fairly. Maybe they'd finally gotten over their rage at the Retaliation and had stopped killing people on sight. They had to have some human decency left, didn't they?