Stealing Second (The Amendments Book One 1) (27 page)

“No,” said the man. He tossed Ace a set of keys. “The owner is locked up i
nside that camp. I work for him. He won’t mind. Can you drive a thirteen speed?”

“
Is your name Animal?”

“What?”

“Never mind. Let’s move it. Gary, whatever you have to do. We need to get everyone into the woods and over to the camp,” he said, turning to the burly man. “How far away is it?”

“Through the woods, it’s about a quarter mile. It’s all of a mile by road.
I get it,” he said, pointing to his chest where
Animal
was stitched in red onto a white patch. “Yeah, I sometimes forget,” he said, thickly.

Ace chuckled, winked at me, and charged out the door. Animal followed him and I ran out to join a group of men that repeatedly pointed in my direction. Just then, the silence was shattered by a nearby volley of gunfire.
Our army, the one that had just saved by the narrowest of margins, was uncomfortably milling around outside are staring off into the woods. I saw a few brave men and women dash off toward the woods to aid the others, but most stood idly by, waiting for direction. “Come on!” I shouted. “The first group needs our help! What are you waiting for?” The men stared at me as if I had just escaped from a mental hospital. I recognized one of them as the camouflage man. I racked my brain and pointed at him. “What about Marie, and Leah, and Kevin?” I asked. “Aren’t they worth fighting for?”

I could see the man Ace had called Tyler was visibly shaken, but he nodded his head and picked up a hunting rifle. “He’s right,” Tyler said, pointing to me. “We can either bring the fight to them, or wait here to be annihilated. I’m going to fight!”

I nodded my head. “To the camp!” I shouted.

“To the camp!” repeated the camouflage man.

We began running through the crowd, shouting out our battle cry. Initially, only a few voices joined in, but that soon changed. I followed a group of three men running across a pasture toward the woods. The gunfire from the trees had grown to a feverish pitch, and the chatter of automatic weapons made my blood turn cold. I thought of Cathy and Jack. What chance did they have against such weapons? I turned to take a glance over my shoulder and my heart swelled with pride. A great wave of men and women was rolling up behind me. Beyond them, I saw the stacks of two semis belching smoke into the evening sky. Whatever was going to happen, live or die, would be decided in the next ten minutes.

I hit the woods at a full run and slowed to a jog as I picked my way through scattered tangles of brush.
Here and there, huge boulders, the size of Smart Cars, sprang from the earth. A gloom had settled on the forest and it wasn’t long before I passed by one of the first casualties of the battle. A man had been shot dead, his torso nearly ripped in half. A bullet whizzed by my ear. To my right, a group of men was returning fire from behind the safety of the oaks. To my left, someone tended to a screaming woman. The still air was thick with gun smoke. I held my shotgun at the ready and continued my charge. I knew our only chance of making it was to repel our enemies and drive them out of the woods and back to the camp. Behind me, I heard the battle cries of nearly a thousand of my fellow citizens.

Ahead of me, dozens of bright flashes lit up the gloom. Branches fell and men screamed. Bullets thudded into the trunks of the elms
, and bits of bark exploded from the wounds like blood. There seemed to be someone fighting behind each tree I passed. I fought the urge to take up a position behind one. I was determined to make it to the camp or to die trying.

I ran across the body of a dead soldier. He had been shot in the face
, and his bloody blue helmet was lying a few feet from his body. I kicked the helmet as if it were a soccer ball. I watched it skitter into a stump, and then I felt something grab my foot. It felt like a hand, but I’m sure it was a root. The result was the same. I was sent sprawling face first, and I landed with a thud on top something that felt like a cannon ball. For a moment, I thought I had been gut shot. I clutched my stomach and fought to catch my breath. People began to leap over me. I couldn’t breathe and bullets were flying just over my head. Two feet to my right, a man wailed and crumpled to the ground. I watched in horror as he tried stuffing his insides back into the gaping hole in his stomach. More and more people ran past as I continued to catch my breath. I knew I had cracked at least one rib, but I was ashamed to feel any pain after watching the man next to me. He gave me a pleading look, just before pitching over onto his face.

I turned away as tears began stinging my eyes. Another group ran over and around me as I painfully sucked air into empty lungs. “Gary!” screamed a woman’s voice. “Gary!”

I turned to see Cathy drop to her knees next to me. Her eyes were filled with terror. “Fell,” I grunted. “I … cracked a rib or two. Give me a second.”

Her expression changed and she leaned forward to kiss me. As bullets ripped over our heads amid the battle cries and the screams of the wounded, we exchanged a passionate kiss. The kiss seemed to energize me and Cathy helped me to my feet. “Can you run?” she asked. “Maybe you should wait here?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. The battle was already retreating deeper into the woods. I knew we had them on the run. More of our people streamed by us, many nursing injuries of their own. “I’ll be okay. Come on, we’ve got to join the others.”

“I love you,” she cried, and she buried her head into my neck. “You have to believe me!”

I don’t know what I had been expecting her to say, but that certainly wasn’t it. I was transported back in time, to the summer after graduating high school, when another girl had told me the same thing. Not knowing if it were true or not, I told Cathy exactly what I had told her. “I love you, too,” I said. Of course, the results were different this time around. Instead of giving into to our passions, Cathy and I exchanged a quick kiss and began to run. Although I had been down for only a few minutes, the tide of the battle had decidedly turned. Ahead, the woods were filled with armed citizens fighting like seasoned soldiers. Many were now carrying the weapons of the dead soldiers and the rout seemed to be on.

Cathy and I stumbled across the b
odies of three dead soldiers. She grabbed my arm and we skidded to a stop. She dropped her rifle and picked up an assault rifle. She held it up to me and gave me a thirty-second tutorial on how to use it. “Do you understand?” she asked, handing me the gun.

I nodded my head. “I think so,” I said.

Cathy stripped off one of the soldier’s cartridge belts and slipped it around my waist. The canvas belt was heavy as it pulled down on my bruised stomach muscles. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Maybe you’re hurt worse than you think?”

“I’ll be fine. I just took a nasty fall back there. I landed on a rock the size of a bowling ball.”

Cathy nodded and strapped on a cartridge belt of her own. She then leaned over and picked up an assault rifle. A few stragglers brushed past us, a skinny man with bloody bandage wrapped around his forehead and two women who must have been well into their fifties. The old gals were dressed in camouflage hunting clothes and each of them carried a rifle. They moved slowly but steadily, barely even noticing us. Up ahead, I could see that lines were already being formed as the siege on the camp had begun. Once again, Cathy and I continued to jog toward the front lines. Here the bodies of the dead UN soldiers were strewn across the earth like fallen leaves.

My heart leapt into my throat as we charged ahead. Somehow, I felt sure that we would be successful, that I would soon be reunited with my family. Fifty feet from the edge of the woods, Cathy took me by the arm and hauled me down behind a moss-covered boulder. A thundering chatter burst from the camp
, and the forest was filled with screaming pain and sizzling gunfire. Brilliant tracer rounds lit up the forest like flying bits of yellow flame. “Those are .50 caliber rounds,” Cathy groaned. “Oh shit, we’re so screwed.”

I could feel the slugs slamming into the
Volkswagen-sized boulder. Some spiraled away as they ricocheted off into the forest. I stuck my head over the top, just long enough to see a panic-driven wave of civilians retreating in our direction. They were almost immediately cut down by a hail of bullets that I imagined to be the size of golf balls. I ducked back down and shook my fist. “We’re being wiped out,” I shouted. “What can we do?”

Cathy turned
to me, and I could see the tears. “There’s nothing we can do,” she hissed. “We can’t compete against those weapons!”

I shook my head. I didn’t know how many of these .50 caliber weapons were firing at us, but I knew we needed to take them out.
Ahead of us, I could hear sporadic bursts of fire coming from our own people, but compared to the big guns of our enemy, they sounded like muffled pops of popcorn. Beyond that were the hideous screams of the wounded. Cathy rolled out from behind the boulder and blindly let loose with a burst of automatic fire. She quickly rolled back, just as the ground where she had been lying was torn to shreds by strafing gunfire. More rounds crashed into the boulder and I ducked down, trying to make myself as small as possible.

Chapter 19

There was a slight pause in the shooting and the woods were suddenly filled with civilians running our way. Most had dropped their weapons and were fleeing the carnage as fast as their legs would carry them. “No!” cried Cathy. “Go back! We have to keep fighting!”

A moment later the big guns opened up again and people began to fall like so many dominoes. Most of them were thrown violently forward and I closed my eyes
, their images forever burned into my mind.

“We’ve got to make a run for it!” shouted Cathy. “We’re being massacred!”

I opened my eyes and was about to speak when I heard a new sound and felt a strange wind in my face. I looked up to the sky and saw dozens of huge dark bodies swooping over us. At first I thought the choppers were there to drive the final nails into our coffins. But suddenly I realized that this was not the case. I heard the hiss of rockets and in the distance, great flashes of light preceded thunderous explosions. “Could it be?” I shouted to Cathy.

Cathy’s eyes were large and a smile slowly stretched across her face. “Thank God!” she cried. The air was suddenly alive with heavy automatic fire and it seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. I reached out for Cathy’s hand and we huddled together behind the boulder as the battle raged on.
My ears threatened to burst as the great guns continued to duel, and there was the sound of a wounded helicopter as it plummeted from the sky and crashed somewhere outside the forest. Cathy buried her face into my chest and despite my aching ribs I clung to her as tightly as I could.

Time seemed to stand still as the battle raged on.
We may have been behind the boulder as long as five minutes. But slowly the tracer rounds stopped ripping through the woods and a few moments later, it sounded like the helicopters were touching down somewhere near the camp. Cathy pulled away and stared at me, excitedly. “I think we won,” she gasped. “Oh my God, I think we won!”

Even as she spoke, I could hear the gunshots trickling off like the last firecrackers on the fourth of July. The big guns were silent. We picked up our rifles and rose to our feet. “Let’s get out there,” I said. “Come on!”

I followed Cathy as we ran over the dead and wounded and through the smoky woods. Just as we were about to dash out into the open, Cathy and I were joined by Jack. His face was filled with tiny cuts, as if he had dived head first into a patch of thorns, but otherwise he seemed all right. I was happy to see him and he smiled at us giddily. We burst through the woods with hundreds of others. Before us, the outside perimeter of the camp lay in ruins. Most of the fence had been obliterated and dead UN soldiers littered the green grass. American troops were swooping into the camp, followed by armed civilians in search of their loved ones. The massive steel warehouse looked relatively unscathed compared to the carnage outside and I was filled with hope. Together we ran after the troops and those who followed. A large overhead door was opened and the captives started spilling out into the sunset’s orange light.

I ran straight for the crowd that was exiting the warehouse and was soon separated from both Cathy and Jack. There was the occasional pop of gunfire, but I hardly paid attention. I brushed past the throng of the overjoyed, wondering how many would soon learn they had lost loved ones in the battle to rescue them. I pushed that out of my mind. Suddenly, I heard my name. My heart stopped and frantically, I began to scan the crowd. “Gary!” I heard again, but I couldn’t place the voice. “Gary!” I turned to see a strange woman shouting my name, only to watch a grimy-faced man rush into her arms. That’s the trouble with this world. There are just too many guys named Gary.

Cursing, I continued to wade into the crowd. I wondered how many there were. Tens of thousands, I thought. The throng of dazed and confused never seemed to stop, and it was at least fifty feet across. Finally, I held my rifle to my chest and stayed rooted where I was. All around me, I watched families and friends as they were tearfully reunited. I saw women kissing soldiers and soldiers kissing babies. I even saw a man kissing a man, but I didn’t see a single member of my family, nor did I see Neil or Violet.

My heart sank with each passing footstep. I stood there until the crowd began to thin and soldiers began to evacuate the wounded. Slowly, like the chill of night air, I began to feel panic set in. I began to walk, but my walk soon turned to a dogged dance of twisting and turning. I began to shout out names, but to no avail. Suddenly, the crowd was behind me and I rushed back into it, desperately searching for my people. I spotted Jack, his arms wrapped around a woman
who looked just like how I imagined she would. She was stout with white hair and baggy skin. They both looked so happy; it just didn’t seem fair.