Half Past Midnight (25 page)

The pause was longer this time. Finally, anger clipping his speech, he replied, “Yes, Leeland, I remember. I remember quite well. We agreed that one of us wouldn’t walk away from that meeting.”

Ken arched an eyebrow. I hadn’t ever told that to anyone. Larry continued before anyone else could say anything. “And unlike you, Mr. Dawcett, I keep my promises.”

I was just about to taunt him again when City Hall unexpectedly exploded behind us in a deafening roar. Flaming debris showered the streets, adding the noise of a lumberyard falling from the sky.

I stared for a moment, realizing that Larry thought we were all still in there. Then my anger flared, and I thumbed the radio back to life. “That’s not quite what I meant when I said one of us wouldn’t walk away, Larry. I seem to recall there being something about us meeting face to face. What’s the matter,
General
? Too frightened to face me?”

“I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy, Leeland. You do seem to have the devil’s own luck, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. Unfortunately, your Captain Brady doesn’t. He was still inside that building. He and his driver.”

“How unfortunate for them.”

“I take it that doesn’t bother you too much?”

“You should know better than that, Leeland.”

His cold-heartedness never ceased to amaze me. As it occurred to me that Larry was probably straddling the fence between genius and insanity, the shouts and sounds of the battle for Rejas intruded. “Sorry, Larry, I don’t have time for another debate. It seems my friends here are in the middle of a fight. You’ll just have to wait.”

“Leeland!” He practically screamed in to the radio. “So help me—”

I clicked off the power in mid-threat. “Okay, Jim, you wanted my advice?” I turned to face him. “The guy’s a nutcase. You can’t reason with him, so don’t bother trying. I say we split up and gather as many of our people as we can. We’ll meet at our place as quickly as possible. Larry’s bound to find out where it is sooner or later, but by then we should be long gone.”

“Why your place?” he asked. “I can think of a dozen places a lot closer.”

“You remember that stash I showed you?” He nodded. “That wasn’t the only one.”

“What?”

I grinned. “Better to have it and not need it—”

“Yeah, yeah,” he interrupted. “I’ve heard it before. Save it.” He turned to the others. “Everyone know where Amber Peddy’s place is?” Everybody nodded.

“All right, get as many people together as you can find and meet there in…” He turned back to me. “How long?”

I gave it my best guesstimation, “Three hours should give us enough time to gather people, spread the word, and get through the woods to Amber’s.”

“Okay. Eleven o’clock, no later than midnight. Let’s go!”

We scattered, each of us rushing to get to as many Rejans as we could. With an ulterior motive, I ran south, down a fire-lit Main Street. I knew Megan was eating with the Petry’s tonight, and that they had planned to volunteer to feed some of the visiting “soldiers.” That was my first destination.

I stuck to the flickering shadows, running in darkened doorways and alleys. It got easier as I got further from the twin conflagrations that had been, mere minutes before, Rejas High School and the City Hall. Turning left on Madison, I soon found that those weren’t the only fires in Rejas, only the most obvious. As I headed into the residential area of town, I found several homes ablaze. In front of one, I saw two of Troutman’s men using an abandoned car for cover as they pinned a family inside the burning building with gunfire. I drew my knives and took them from behind before they ever knew I was there. Yelling to the people in the house that it was safe, I grabbed the soldiers’ weapons.

As the family emerged, I recognized the man, though I couldn’t recall his name. Tossing him one of the soldiers’ rifles, I told them about the proposed meeting at Amber’s. They headed north, and I continued further south. Two blocks down, I turned right onto Dowling, the Petry’s street, and spotted bodies lying in several of the yards. This was one of the nicer sections of town, and many of the townspeople had moved into the suddenly abundant empty homes after D-day, making it one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in Rejas. Tonight it looked like a war zone.

Three houses on the street were aflame, illuminating the macabre scene, and while I saw no signs of life, there must have been thirty bodies visible by the flickering light. I was relieved to see that the vast majority of them wore uniforms—Larry’s men. I also noted with approval that none of the corpses still had their weapons. That meant several armed citizens were in the streets nearby. All I had to do was find them without getting myself shot by friendly fire.

An abrupt volley of gunfire punctuated the night, and I instinctively ducked behind a tree before I realized the sounds had come from several blocks north. Checking for any signs of life, I scanned the other houses. Nothing. No movement anywhere. Were they hiding nearby, waiting to shoot the first thing that moved? Or had they moved on to another location? The Petry home was three doors down on the right, but I hesitated at the thought of making myself visible. Instead, I went to the back of the nearest home and began scaling fences until I reached the backyard. Inching my way up to the kitchen window, I peeked inside.

“No!!” I screamed, and threw myself to the ground just as the window exploded above me, and the relative quiet was shattered by the sound of a shotgun blast. Glass shards rained down on me as I tried to identify myself.

“Wait! Eric, it’s Leeland!!” I rolled to the side of the window in case Eric Petry hadn’t heard me before correcting his aim. During that panicked moment, I heard the elder Petry pump the shotgun once more before my words must have registered.

While I was trying to do a belly-crawl through the broken glass at the speed of a desert jackrabbit, I heard his hesitant call. “Leeland? Lee, is that you?”

“Unless you fire that next round, it is! Jesus H., Eric. You nearly blew my head off!” Panting, I rolled onto my back and stared up at the beautiful trail of the Milky Way above. As my heart tried to burst through my rib cage, it occurred to me just how close I had come to never seeing those stars again.

“Lee?” Eric’s voice was above me, concerned, perhaps a little frightened. I looked up and saw his face, upside down from my perspective, as I lay there in the grass… and the glass. “Lee, did I hurt…? Aw, hell, did I shoot you? Are you shot?”

“No,” I gasped. “But not for lack of trying. Oh God, Eric!” I nearly laughed, I was so giddy with relief. Then the pain hit me. “Jeez, I think my arms are cut up from crawling through what’s left of your window.” Raising my arms, I saw that the cuts were all superficial—painful, but far from dangerous.

Megan’s future father-in-law reached down through the empty window frame and offered me a hand. “Better get in here before the shot attracts attention.”

“Yeah.” I groaned as he helped me through the window. “Everyone all right?”

“No.” He turned and walked back into the kitchen. As I followed him in, I saw the blood. God, there was blood everywhere! On the walls, the floor, Eric, and splattered on the food at the table. Smeared, bloody footprints were all over the place. A uniformed man sat in a pool of blood in the far corner, staring down through sightless eyes at the steak knife protruding from his chest. It had been done right, shoved in and twisted, maximizing the damage beyond what the little knife would normally do. The man had probably gone into shock immediately.

“Megan got him.” Petry explained. “She was faster than the rest of us.” He shook his head. “Me and Andrew just sat and stared when they went for their guns. But not Megan.”

My heart jumped into my throat. “Where is she?”

“We realized what was going on then, and we jumped after the other guy.” He nodded to another body, fallen behind the dinner table. “But he had his pistol out by that time. Andrew got to ’im first, and then me, and by God, Leeland, Megan was right there with us. She was so freakin’ fast!” He began to sob. “She just wasn’t quite fast enough. None of us were.”

I was frantic. “Eric, where is she?”

Eyes filled with tears, he pointed upstairs. “I don’t even remember hearing the pistol go off. She tried, Leeland. God in Heaven, I
never
saw nobody
try
so hard!” His emotions finally got the better of him, and he sobbed out the rest. “She just wasn’t quite fast enough.”

I tore up the stairs, following a trail of blood so solid it looked as if someone had painted it on the carpet—a trail that led to Megan. She was sitting on the floor of a bedroom with her eyes closed, leaning back against the wall. Her shirt was nearly solid red, covered with blood, her face and hands coated as well. I wanted to scream, but my voice caught, trapped behind the constricting of my throat. My daughter… my baby!

Then she opened her eyes, and I
did
scream as I stumbled back against the doorframe. “Dad?” she sobbed. “Daddy?” She staggered to her feet, and I barely caught her as she fell against me. It took a moment for me to comprehend what she was saying as she sobbed against my chest. At the sight of Andrew’s body lying on the bed, I finally understood.

“They killed him. They killed him.” She kept repeating it, her personal mantra, her litany of anguish.

“She wouldn’t leave him.” Eric’s voice behind me gave me a start. “How could I do less? The others in the neighborhood left a few minutes ago, but Megan wouldn’t go until we got him up here and laid him out proper. She wanted a few minutes alone with him, so I went downstairs. When I heard you comin’ over the fence… well, you know the rest.”

I suddenly felt self-conscious, holding my daughter in front of Eric, while just a few feet away, his son lay dead. I knew how he must be feeling since I had just run that gamut of emotions myself. But mainly I was just grateful that it wasn’t Megan lying on that bed.

He didn’t seem to notice, though. He stared sightlessly at Andrew’s body.

“Where were the others going, Eric?”

“Big Cypress Creek.” His voice was as distant as his sight. “Said they’d wait there for a little while ’til they could figure out what to do next.”

“How many of them?”

He finally pulled his eyes away from Andrew’s body and turned to me. “’Bout fifty, I guess. But a few of ‘em were hurt pretty bad, so there might be some that didn’t make it.”

“Can you show me the way? I’m supposed to help gather folks up and get them to Amber Peddy’s place as soon as I can.”

Eric nodded. “Go on downstairs. Give me a minute with Andrew.”

Megan sobbed as I half-carried her out of the room and down the stairs. We waited by the front door until Eric came and led us out without a word. As we left the street, I looked back to see the house aflame, burning from the upstairs bedroom down. Turning to Eric, I saw tears and anguish, but mostly I saw hatred—raw, burning hatred for those who had taken his son. I never once saw him look back.

***

We made it to the creek with no trouble and found the impromptu meeting place where Eric’s neighbors, along with others, had gathered. More than a hundred people were assembled trying to cope with the fact that their lives had just been irrevocably altered in the last hours as much as they had been on D-day.

I sat Megan at the edge of the water and began to clean the blood off of her while listening to the frightened whispers of the crowd. Megan was in shock, unresisting, but not helping either, so it took me a few minutes. As I finished, I scanned the faces around us.

It was immediately evident that these people had absolutely no idea of what to do next, so it took little coaxing to convince them to accompany me to the rendezvous at Amber’s. We broke into three groups, and each took a different route to gather as many people as possible along the way.

A ragtag parade of Rejas refugees, our group skirted the town, gathering others before making it to my home just before the appointed time. When I got there, I had to push my way through a crowd to make it to the house. People milled about, crowded together like the proverbial sardines in a can.

Finally reaching the back door, Megan and I entered to find the inside even more chaotic than the yard. Debra, Cindy, and Zachary, as well as several others I didn’t know, were busy tending the more seriously wounded. Debra saw us as we came in and ran to help as I led Megan inside.

“What happened?” Her voice shook, and she was obviously fighting to keep control. “Oh, my God! Is this blood on her? Her whole shirt is…” she trailed off and frantically began to unbutton Megan’s shirt. I closed the door behind me to preserve my daughter’s modesty.

“She’s not hurt, Deb.” Debra didn’t stop until she had confirmed it for herself. Then she turned frightened eyes to me.

I hesitated, not wanting to mention what had happened in front of Megan. But then I thought that any reaction was better than the stupor she’d been in since I took her out of the Petry’s house. “They got Andrew.”

“Oh, God…” She put her arms around her daughter.

“Zachary,” I jerked his attention away from the blood on his sister. “Go get Megan another shirt from her closet.” He ran.

I turned back to Debra. “It all happened right in front of her.” I studied Megan’s face as I spoke, hoping to see some reaction, but she just stared at the floor.

“Where’s Amber?” I wanted her to have a look at Megan to make sure there wasn’t anything wrong with her beyond the emotional shock of losing her fiancé.

“I think she’s still at the hospital.” Her voice quavered a bit as she continued, “I haven’t heard from her since she left this morning, anyway.”

It made sense. Amber wouldn’t leave with people still under her care.

Zach returned with one of his sister’s shirts and handed it to Debra.

“Is Ken back yet?” I asked.

Cindy had come over by then, and she answered, “He’s out at the number three stash.”

That was about a half-mile into the woods to the south of the house. “Okay, I’ve got to talk to him and find out where we stand. If anything happens while I’m out—” I stopped, realizing that I had no idea what to do if we were attacked here and now. “I guess we play that one by ear,” I finished lamely, and ducked out the door to find Ken and Jim.