Cover of Night (34 page)

“We can’t just sit and wait,” Creed said. “We aren’t prepared for a siege, and that’s what this is—”

Cate felt as if her voice were coming from outside her. “There’s another way,” she heard herself say. Everyone shut up and looked at her, and she found herself moving forward. Deep inside her a panicked little voice was saying
no, no,
but somehow she couldn’t stop her feet from moving as she pushed her way through the knot of people to jab her finger hard on the mountains
Cal
had judged goat-worthy. “I can get up those mountains. I’ve
been
up those mountains. I’m a climber, you know that, you saw my gear. It’s safe when you tie off”—that wasn’t quite the truth, but she was going with it—“and they won’t be expecting us to try that route, so they won’t be watching. No one will be shooting, no one will be sticking his neck out like a sacrificial lamb.”

“Cate,”
Cal
began. “You have two kids.”

“I know,” she said, tears gathering in her eyes. “I
know.
” And she wanted to see them grow up. She wanted to take care of them and hold her grandchildren and have all the million other things parents dreamed of. But she couldn’t shake a sudden certainty that he wouldn’t make it through if he went with his plan, which would leave them even more vulnerable. Everyone here could end up dead, and her kids would lose their mother anyway. As dangerous as it was, she didn’t think going up the mountains was as dangerous as what
Cal
was proposing.

“She’s right,” Roy Edward interrupted.

They all turned toward the old man. He was sitting on one of the dining room chairs that they’d brought down the night before. His left arm and the left side of his face were colored a deep purple from a fall, but his mouth was a grim line. “What you’re wanting to do is dangerous, boy, and I don’t see why you’d think we’d be willing to sacrifice you to save ourselves.”

There was a murmur of agreement. Cate was so grateful to the crusty old man she could have hugged him.

“Going over the mountains in that direction will take too long,”
Cal
pointed out.

“If you kept on in that direction, yes, but these mountains are riddled with abandoned mines.” Roy Edward hauled himself to his feet and unsteadily made his way over to them. “I know because my daddy worked in some of them, and I played in ’em when I was a sprout. There used to be trails from the cut that wound all over, because every one of them started from there. Makes sense they weren’t going to climb up from the other side, don’t it? As I remember, one or two of those old mines go completely through a fold in the mountains. Don’t know what kind of shape they’d be in after all these years, but if you could get through one of them, that could save considerable time.”

He traced a shaky forefinger across the mountains to the cut and looked up at Cate. “Even if the mines are blocked, which I expect they are, you could work your way over to the cut. You’d be way above where these bastards would be looking, and the cover is dense up there. Once you got to the cut, you’d be behind them.”

She wiped the tears from her face and turned to face
Cal.
“I’m going,” she said shakily. “No matter what you do, I’m going.”

He was silent a moment, his pale gaze searching her face and reading the desperation there. He glanced at Creed, and she couldn’t read the message that passed between them.

“All right,” he finally said in that calm way of his, as if she’d said she was going to the grocery store. “But I’m going with you.”

CATE WAS ASTONISHED—YOU DIDN’T JUST “GO” ROCK climbing; it was something that took conditioning, preparation, and experience—but then she recalled a conversation they’d had when Cal opened the door to the attic stairs after she broke the key to it, just days ago. Days. Dear God, so much had happened it seemed as if weeks had passed. “You said you’d done some mountaineering.” Mountaineering was different from rock climbing, but a lot of the equipment was the same. She supposed it was basically the same principle, too, just some different techniques.

“Mostly mountaineering,” he corrected. “Some climbing.”

Creed spun the notebook around in that decisive way he had and took up the pen. “Okay, let’s make a list of what you’ll need so nothing is forgotten. How long do you think it will take you to get through the cut and to a phone?” He looked at Cate as he spoke, because she had been on climbs here.

All the climbs she’d done had been day climbs, but she knew the terrain they were talking about. The mountains loomed behind her house, and she saw them every day. She could look at several of the rock faces and think,
“I climbed you”.
She knew how long it took to get to them, and how long to go up them. In some places the ascent might be easier than the climbs she and Derek had mapped out, because a challenging climb had been what they were there for. Memories flooded back, crystal-clear mental pictures of exactly what she was proposing to do, the climbs and hiking they would face.

She finally said, “I’m thinking a day and a half, maybe two days, to get to a point where we can start hiking. How far would it be to the cut, Roy Edward?”

He snorted. “As the crow flies, maybe five miles, but you’re not a crow. With all the up and down, I’d say you’re looking at fifteen, twenty miles.”

“Daylight hours only,”
Cal
said. “We won’t be able to use lights. So…two days of hiking, and that’s a hard pace. Four days total to the cut.”

Four days. Cate felt sick to her stomach. That was too long, way too long. So much could happen in that length of time—

Neenah reached out and took her hand. “We’ll be all right,” she said firmly. “We’ll hold out, no matter what they want or what they do.”

“Damn right,” Walter said. He looked tired, they all did, but there was also an undiminished fury in his eyes. They had been attacked, friends had died, and he didn’t look inclined to throw up his hands in surrender. “Just about all of us have some sort of rifle or shotgun; we have ammunition—and more of it in the general store if we need it. We have food, and we have water. If those sons of bitches thought we’d be an easy target, they can just think again.”

A muted chorus of “yeahs,” “damn straights,” and “that’s rights” filled the basement, and heads nodded.

Cal
scratched his jaw. “Along that line—Neenah, you have a good many fifty-pound bags of feed in the back of the store.”

“Yes, I’ve started stocking up for the winter. Why?”

“Not even an armor-piercing bullet will go through bags of sand, which is why the military uses them. We don’t have sand, but we do have those bags of feed. Feed won’t be as good as sand—it isn’t packed as tightly—but stack ’em two deep and you’ve got an effective barricade.” He paused. “By the way, I chopped a hole in the ceiling.”

She blinked, then smiled. “Of course you did. I wondered how you got to your rooms.” She indicated his clothes. If having a hole in the ceiling of her store bothered her, she didn’t show it.

Cal
looked around the basement. “All of you can’t stay here; it’s too crowded, and it isn’t necessary. We’ll pick out the safest houses, the ones with the least exposure, and spread out. We can use the feed bags to fortify the walls exposed to gunfire. That way you can function better and keep a better watch. Get some trenches dug, too, so you can move from place to place in safety. They don’t have to be deep and they don’t have to be long, just long enough to cross some open areas and deep enough for a belly crawl.”

“We need food, too, and blankets, and clothes. Some people need their medications,” said Sherry. “Show us how to get from place to place without getting our asses blown off, so we can start gathering stuff.”

“I’ll get most of it—” he began, but she raised her hand to stop him.

“I didn’t say do it, I said show us how to do it. If you don’t, we’ll be pretty useless without you. We have to be able to hold down the fort.”

“I have a lot of extra blankets and pillows,” Cate said. “Food, too. And a bunch of mattresses that could be used for protection, if those are any good. If not, then drag them down and sleep on them.”

“Mattresses are a good idea,”
Cal
said, “for sleeping. Don’t sleep in a bed. Drag the mattresses down on the floor.”

“What else can we use to barricade the walls?” asked Milly.

“Things like boxes of old magazines, if you keep things like that. Books, packed tight in a box. Cushions aren’t any good; they aren’t dense enough. Furniture’s no good. Think of things like rolling up your rugs as tight as you can, tying them so they’ll stay rolled, and standing them at an angle against the vulnerable wall.”

“Does anyone have a pool table with a slate bed?” asked Creed.

“I do,” someone said, and Cate looked around to see Roland Gettys raise his hand a little. He seldom said much, usually just listened to conversations with a slight smile on his face, unless someone asked him a direct question.

“A slate pool table is an excellent shield, if you can get it turned on its side.”

“Weighs a ton,” said Roland, nodding his head.

Creed looked at
Cal.
“I’ll take care of getting this organized. You and Cate go get what you’ll need.” He looked down at his notepad. “I’ve written down exactly nothing. Do you need to make a list?”

“I don’t think so, not for the climbing gear,” Cate said. “I could pack that with my eyes closed.” She also needed something to wear besides pajamas, but she wasn’t likely to forget clothes.

“That’s it, then,” said
Cal
, holding out his hand to her. “You handle the climbing gear, and I’ll handle everything else. Let’s get moving.”

Getting back to her house seemed easier, in one way, than her desperate flight the night before—she didn’t have to run. Flimsy bedroom slippers didn’t provide much protection for her feet, so she was glad to take more care as she and
Cal
slipped from cover to cover. Taking more care, however, meant taking more time, and the longer they were out there the more exposed she felt. It was incredibly creepy, knowing someone sitting on the side of a mountain over half a mile away could be watching her through a scope, tracking her every move, easing his finger to the trigger—

At that thought, she stopped where she was, shuddering. As if he were aware of her slightest movement, her position, at all times,
Cal
stopped and looked back at her. “What’s wrong?”

Cate looked around. They were, for the moment, completely protected.
Cal
used every bit of possible cover, from rocks and trees and buildings to low places in the ground. Right now they were behind some waist-high rocks. This wasn’t the same as the night before, when she and Maureen had been on the first floor of the house, with only wooden walls between them and a bullet. “I just felt as if someone was watching, as if the shooters could see us.”

“They can’t. Not right now.”

“I know. But last night—when Maureen and I were upstairs—I felt the bullet coming, and I panicked and tackled her. It was so
eerie.
I could actually feel it, like something tickling between my shoulder blades. The window blew in, and after that we heard the shot. I just now had sort of the same feeling, but there’s no way a bullet can go through these rocks, is there?”

“No, we’re safe here.” He worked his way back to her and crouched there, looking around, an intent expression in his eyes. “But don’t discount that feeling, especially in a combat situation. I get ’em on the back of my neck. I always listen. So we’re going to change course a little. It’s longer this way, but if you’ve got the willies, we aren’t taking any chances.”

She nodded, absurdly pleased that he knew what she was talking about. He studied the ground for a moment, then got on his belly and began slithering away from the rocks at a ninety-degree angle, following a slight indentation that she hadn’t noticed. Her pajamas would be beyond saving, she thought, and went down on her belly, too, to follow him.

Billy Copeland carefully scanned with his scope, back and forth. He thought he’d seen a flash of cloth around some rocks. The distance was at the far end of his skill, but a lucky shot was just as good as a skillful one, and in any case, as Teague had explained, they were now in the psychological phase of this operation: Work on their nerves, wear them down. He didn’t have to actually hit his target to remind them that they could be touched from a frightening distance.

The decision he had to make was whether or not to fire without having a clear target. On the one hand, they had fired a helluva lot of rounds last night, and his instinct now told him to make every shot count. On the other hand, it would be fun to make someone piss their britches when they thought they were so well hidden.

His finger began tightening on the trigger, but then he eased the pressure. Not yet, not unless he knew for certain he’d seen something. No sense in wasting a round.

Her house was totally silent. Even at night when the boys were in bed asleep, Cate could hear the faint hum of appliances, feel a vague sense that the house was alive. Not now. It was empty and curiously dark and cold, despite the sunshine, because she’d pulled all the curtains against the night at sundown the day before. The curtains had not only kept the light at bay, they also had prevented the house from warming.

“Give me the key to the attic door,” said
Cal.
“I’ll bring down all the climbing gear while you’re changing clothes.”

“I thought I was going to get the climbing gear.”

“You’ve been having the willies. Stay where it’s safer. The attic has no protection at all.”

She raised her eyebrows. “That makes me feel better, how?
You’ll
be up there.”

“That’s right. And you’ll be in your room. Just a little while ago you looked ready to fight half the state to keep me from going out by myself tonight, and I listened to you. That’s the way I feel right now, in this situation, and you’re going to listen to me.” His voice was firm, the expression in his eyes cool and clear.