Walking in the Rain: Surviving the Fall (6 page)

With no time to dawdle, I lined up my first shot and gently squeezed the trigger.  I was in a semi prone position, belly down but with my upper body raised just enough to work the lever.  The first raider went down with a bullet in his side, the round catching him right in the armpit at the edge of what I took to be a magazine carrier rig.  I was a little over forty yards away and the 38 Special was not an especially potent caliber but the man still went down with a scream. 

I worked the lever action, barrel drifting to the side a bit as I fired again, this time my bullet catching the second raider with a hit to his left arm.  Solid, but not a killing wound.  I worked the lever again, and pushed myself into a roll that moved me about three feet from my previous spot. 

Centering on the wounded raider, I went for a head shot and saw blood spray.  I was a little low, but the bullet seemed to carve a tunnel in the man’s neck, blasting out.  I levered the action, lining up for the third raider, when an incoming round struck the ground inches from my face with a chilling crack.  Crap, I thought.  The backyard sneak was zeroing in on me.

I rolled again, this time at an angle to gain more separation from the shooter.  I dared not pause to even look up until I was crouched down behind a nearby tree trunk.  I took a quick peek and dropped flat on my belly. The good news was both the raiders I shot appeared to be down for good, but unfortunately, I now had two more angry, rifle wielding thugs gunning for me.  And they had me caught in a crossfire unless I bailed quick.

Deciding a retreat was in order, I began to crawl away even as high caliber bullets began to rain down around me.  I was outnumbered and outgunned, and I needed to get out of here.  I could hear yelling but the words sounded failed to make an impression except that I thought they were advancing on me in a leapfrog fashion. 

Crap.  That meant they probably knew what they are doing.   One would fire and the other would dash forward ten or twelve yards, then drop.  By alternating this pattern, one would be shooting while the other covered the distance.  Soon they would have me.

The grass was tall enough to give some cover but I feared once they got closer they would be able to catch the ripple of my movement in the sea of green.  Pausing to take stock, I realized there was really no other option except to hold and fight.  No way would I retreat back to Amy, not while these men lived.  After saving her, I could not risk her life that way.

With one on the right and the other my left, I waited for the left hand attacker to jump up, then shot him center mass.   As my barrel skewed right I knew I would be too late, but still worked the lever frantically and squeezed the trigger.  I couldn’t see the last raider’s face, but the man’s rifle was already coming to bear on me from barely twenty yards away.  Before his barrel completed that arc, I heard another shot.  Then a second, and what sounded like a shuddering sigh.

Not hesitating for a second, I squeezed the trigger as soon as I had a sight picture, then fired twice more before going back to the first flanker and drilling a bullet into the top of his exposed head.  He might have been dead, or wounded, but that insurance shot made sure short of the Second Coming, he wasn’t getting up.

How long I lay there, dazed by the insanity of those few mad minutes, I could never recall.  I was alive, and I didn’t expect to be.  The next thing I knew, I heard a familiar voice calling out to me.

“Luke!  Luke!  Are you okay?”  Amy cried from some distance away.

Not wanting to give away my position, I had no choice now that Amy was announcing her presence to the world.  Muttering under my breath, I finally replied.

“I’m fine.  Calm down.  Stay where you are and don’t say anything else.” I called out.  “Stay still and I will come to you.”

  Sitting there, I realized the tubular magazine on the little rifle was almost empty and I started feeding spare rounds into the loading gate.  By the time I was done, the shaking in my hands had nearly stopped.  I felt tired and shaky from the adrenaline dump, but still forced my legs to work as I low crawled over to a fallen tree limb that offered some minimal cover.

Daring to peek around at my surroundings, I saw several shapes that had once been men, but none of them were now moving.  Three by the truck, including the man who should have killed me and a fourth corpse lying sprawled in the overgrown back yard.  Nothing was moving, and the quiet was stifling after the barrage of gunfire.

“Hey, mister, you okay?”

The voice surprised me, but after a second I realized it was coming from the house.  I looked closely at the front window I could see clearly, but no one was foolish enough to silhouette themselves.  I thought about not answering, but I didn’t want the people in that house getting antsy now that the fighting was done.  Or, at least, done as far as I was concerned.

“Yeah, I’m good.  Thanks for getting that last one.  I just wasn’t fast enough.”

“No problem.  It was my pleasure, believe me.  He was so focused on you he must of forgot I was here and armed too.  Are you one of Dwight’s men?”  The man had a deep, husky voice that sounded friendly enough, all things considered.

“No sir.  I don’t know any Dwight.  My friend and I were just passing by and heard the shooting.  And then the baby started crying.  We didn’t know what was going on here, but anybody shooting into a house with a baby in it must be on the wrong side of things.”

The pause that followed stretched on for over a minute before the man spoke again.

“We thank you for the help.  You could have just kept on going and no one would have known you were there,” he said.

I decided to avoid mentioning my conversation with Amy suggesting we do that very thing.  She was right because somehow we both managed to survive.  There is a reason I try to hold to my rule of not taking on groups of more than three.  The odds just don’t work out.

“We would have known it, sir.  A man’s gotta be able to sleep at night with what he’s done, or not done.”

“Well, call your friend.  Both of you are welcome to join us for lunch.  We don’t have much but under the circumstances, how can we not share?”  The man’s voice was softer now, and seemed to ring with sincerity.  I decided to discuss the proposal with Amy first, so I called her to me by way of answering the man’s offer.

In a few minutes, I made out the shape of my travelling companion creeping through the tall grass and making her way to where I had initially set up.  I was impressed at how smoothly, and quietly, she worked her way across the terrain.  Amy carried the shotgun with a competent, confident grip, barrel down but ready for use at a moment’s notice.

I motioned her over to my new position and she reacted quickly, hustling over and taking a knee as she brought the shotgun to her shoulder, scanning her surroundings.  I was so proud of her progress.

“Are we going in there?” she asked softly.

“We don’t have to if you don’t want.  You know how I am, all ‘Stranger Danger’ about everybody we see.  What do you say?”

Amy gave me a crooked grin.  “Hey, sometimes you just have to take a chance on people.  Look what you did for me.”

I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing.

“I don’t know, Amy.  I think the jury is still out on that one.”

“Bite me, Luke.  Just bite me.”

With that, I couldn’t hold back the laughter another second.

CHAPTER SIX

Stan and Ruth Schecter, and their six month old daughter Sophia, had only been taking shelter in the abandoned house for the last two days.  They’d needed the refuge after Stan, a short but powerfully built guy with hands like hammers, had sprained an ankle on a gopher hole.  Or armadillo hole, he said.  Either way, he was slowing them down and Ruth insisted they needed to fort up somewhere to let the swelling go down.

We learned all this while sitting around the dining room table in the dim little house, eating a potluck meal of soup made from the contents of all our bags.  Ruth seemed extremely pleased by the cup of rice and the freshly cut cattail roots I’d produced from my backpack, but she seemed to be watching me closely.

“Sophia loves rice,” she’d finally said when I asked.

Then the five of us ate in relative silence, the only interruptions coming from the baby as she periodically babbled her approval.  I didn’t know much about babies, since my only sibling was a sister over two years my junior.  The earliest I could recall was seeing her as a little girl, but not as a toddler or younger.

In any case, Sophia seemed to be a very well behaved baby, her earlier shrieks notwithstanding.  Heck, I wanted to cry too the first time somebody started shooting at me.  When I chuckled under my breath at that thought, Amy gave me a curious look and asked if I had anything to share with the class.  When I explained, Stan and Ruth just shook their heads at the idea but couldn’t deny the truth of my statement, either.  Amy laughed, of course.

Once the last of the broth was gulped down, Ruth and Amy volunteered to clean up the dishes using a bucket of water from the kitchen.  Ruth explained that she’d filled the bucket last night from a stream running along the other side of the house near the driveway.  This was their only water source and though not fit for drinking, it could be boiled on their camp stove.  This left me to keep Stan company as he sat rocking the suddenly sleepy Sophia.

“She looks so happy,” I said, noting the contented smile turning up the corners of the little girl’s lips.

“Got any of your own waiting for you back home?”  Stan asked, turning carefully in his seat while trying not to jar the foot he kept elevated on a stack of cardboard boxes.  Despite his stocky shape, Stan had a gaunt, hollow cheeked appearance that looked recent, marking him as another adherent to the Apocalypse Diet.  I imagined any extra food he had or found went to keeping his wife and daughter fed.  He seemed like that kind of guy.

“No sir, nothing like that.”

“Well, now’s probably not the best time, but having kids will surely change your perspective on what is important.”

I nodded.  “The road is certainly no place for a little angel like her, but you already knew that, right?”

“Yeah,” Stan agreed, “but the choice wasn’t left up to us.  When the gang stormed our subdivision, we barely got out with our lives.  Oh, we tried to fight them, me and all the neighbors still around, but they had the numbers.  We killed a mess of them, but for every one I shot seemed like there was two more to take their place.”

“Gangs can be really bad news.  I’ve seen some of them set up on the roads, calling themselves toll collectors, but they’re just bandits.”

“Well, Ruth was smart enough to make me stash a little bit in the woods, just what you see here with us, but without these supplies we’d already be in trouble.  I thought it would be enough to walk to Ruth’s folks’ place, but this bum ankle has slowed us down.”

“How much farther do you have to go?”

“Just to outside of Siloam Springs is all.  Ruth’s family has a nice little setup there and a tight group of neighbors.  They’ll be fine.  So will we, when we get there.”

The man paused, seeming to pick his words as he continued.

“I think you and Amy might be welcomed there too.  Not for me to say for sure, but you sure pulled our fat out of the fire this morning.  Those guys were pretty well set up out front, so I couldn’t get a clear shot, and the first thing they did when they pulled up was threaten to burn the house down if we didn’t come out.”

“Stan, I appreciate the thought.  Maybe we can travel together at least as far as your destination.  There is strength in numbers on the road, as long as you can trust who is watching your back.”

“You two been traveling long?” Stan asked, and I could tell he’d waited until the ladies were out of the room to pose the question.

“Me?  Since about a week after the lights went out.  Freakin’ chaperone made me stay at the hotel six days.  Waiting for the lights to come back on, when we should have been already on the road.  I knew the power was gone when I heard the transformers blowing, but he was convinced the government was going to get things fixed.”

“Wait…what?  Chaperone?”

I nodded.  “I was in Chicago for a national science competition through my school when the lights went out.  Mr. Setzer was there because he was my science teacher.”

“How old are you?”

I had to laugh.  “Sixteen.”

“But, you killed those men, like, like it was nothing.  And Amy…”

“Mr. Schecter, I may be a kid but the world’s changed.  Adapt or die, and I am too young and handsome to go down yet.  Yes, I’ve killed before, but only to defend myself or others.”  I paused, and I noticed my tone of voice changed when I continued despite my conscious effort to remain unaffected.  

“Amy is fourteen, and we met under similar circumstances.  Not my story to tell, but she has seen a lot of pain in her life, and I don’t think that started when the lights went out.  I will not take advantage of her, Mr. Schecter, and I’ll kill anybody who tries.  We might sleep next to each other, but that’s it.”