Stealing Second (The Amendments Book One 1) (28 page)

Across the swirling mass of people, a hundred feet away, I spotted Cathy. She looked exactly how I felt. Our eyes met and she held her hands to her ears and silently screamed out Violet’s name. I quickly turned away. I wasn’t ready to go there, not yet. So many people had exited the warehouse that it was entirely possible we had passed our loved ones like two ships in the night.

I spun around. That was when I spotted the two smoldering wrecks at the back of the compound. I groaned as I recognized them as the trucks Ace and Animal had commandeered from the arena. They had never even made it through the fence. “Ace,” I whispered. Oh my God, no. Ace?”

I stood there for at least a minute, too afraid to move. I gradually became aware of a tiny hand pulling on my sleeve. I look
ed down into the face of a little girl. She had long dark hair and stared up at me with fire in her eyes. “Where is he?” she demanded to know. “Where is my father?”

Behind her stood an attractive, iron-faced woman, her arms wrapped around two young boys. The girl, who looked like a young Wednesday Addams, but who
m I immediately recognized as Ace’s daughter, Penny, stared up at me, impassively. “Where is he?”

Before I even had the words out of my mouth, Penny turned to face her mother and pointed at the two burning dump-trucks. She turned back to face me with tears in her eyes. “Help us?” she pleaded.

As Rachel began sprinting toward the trucks, I scooped Penny up into my arms and began to follow her mother. “I’m so sorry,” I said, breathlessly. “Your father was my friend and he was a brave man.”

“He is a brave man,” hissed Penny.
“He’s still alive, I can feel him.”

I pushed myself to run as fast as I possibly could. We passed her brothers and had nearly caught up to her mother as she stopped at the fence. Fifty feet beyond the fence sat the two ruined trucks. Behind the wheel of the lead truck, I could clearly see Animal’s tortured face. I had no doubt that he was dead.

“Where is he?” shouted Rachel, frantically. “Ace!”

“Rachel?”
I heard Ace call. “Baby, is that you?”

“Ace, oh Ace, where are you?”

“I’m down here, I can’t get up.”

Penny began to kick at me and I quickly
set her down. Inexplicably, ten feet of the twelve-foot fence was flattened. I stared at it and couldn’t imagine what had happened here. Rachel, seemingly unfazed by this miracle, rushed through the open section and dashed around the back of one second dump truck. I followed and then heard her scream.

Penny was behind me and I heard her shout in her tiny voice. “My dad needs a doctor!” All I could feel for her and her family was pity. I rushed around the back of the truck
to see what Rachel was screaming about. Ace was lying on his back with his legs both covered in blood. He was pale white and it looked to me as if he would die at any second. I rushed over to him.

“
I guess you didn’t need us,” he said, dryly, staring at me.

“Don’t talk, baby,” pleaded Rachel. She was sitting next to him and pressing her hands to his bloody thigh. “Help me!” she shouted at me. “He needs a tourniquet!”

“I’m not going to make it,” stammered Ace. “I’m sorry. I’m too shot up.”

The two boys rushed over to his side as I stripped off my belt. Penny stayed where she was. “You are too going to make it. The doctors are on their way,” she said this flatly, as if she were talking about the weather.

I rushed over with my belt. As I wrapped it around his other thigh, Ace stiffened. “Gary, you’ve got to promise me that you’ll look after my family. Will you do that for me?”

“Don’t talk like that,” I snapped. “You heard Penny. The doctors are on their way.”

“Promise me!”

“You’re going to be fine.”

“Promise me, damn you!”

“I promise, but don’t you dare quit fighting!”

The chugging of rotor blades arrived with a rush of wind. I looked up to see a green helicopter falling from the sky. It set down not fifty feet from where we were huddled and three men leapt out the second it touched the ground. One carried two bags and the other two carried a gurney. They all wore red crosses. I stared at Penny and she gave me an odd smile. “My dad will be okay, I won’t let him die,” she said, confidently. “You should go find your family. Don’t worry; when Dad is better, we’ll come find you. I promise.”

I stepped back, letting the medics do their work and feeling a feather run down the length of my spine. Ace hadn’t been kidding when he had told me about his daughter. There were seriously wounded people everywhere I looked, but only one demanded the attention of what appeared to be a MASH unit.
Ace nodded to me and offered me a knowing grin. That was how I left them. As I was walking back to find my family, I heard the big helicopter power up and return to the air. There was no sign of anyone left standing behind the burning trucks.

Chapter 20

I resumed my search and after five long minutes, I ran straight into Neil. The poor kid must have been scared to death because he burst into tears and rushed straight into my arms. I asked him about Violet, but he said they were separated as soon as they arrived. He told me that he had seen Jack, but the way he said it told me that Jack hadn’t been who he was looking for. I knew exactly what he meant. I told him about Ace, but I sugarcoated his injuries and added that I thought that he’d soon be as good as new. He seemed genuinely relieved to hear it. We continued searching and I spotted Cathy, still standing alone, her eyes filled with terror. I pointed her out to Neil and we both ran to her. “Where is she?” shrieked Cathy. “What did they do to her?”

“I don’t know,” moaned Neil, spinning around to search. “They split us up when we got here!”

“You were supposed to look out for her!”

“I couldn’t.
They split us up!”

“Stop
it!” I shouted. “We’ll find her; I know we will!”

“Oh my God!” gasped Cathy. “There she is!”

I turned to see, but Cathy was already racing through the pockets of people that were congregating in the twilight. Neil and I chased after her and a minute later, we found Violet being led away by a large woman. Cathy ran up to her and the big woman let go of Violet’s hand. The three of them shared some words and Cathy hugged the woman, picked up Violet, and turned to face us. I have often wished I had a camera to capture that moment. I realized then that pure happiness has nothing to with anything material; it is something that comes straight from the soul. I saw that type of happiness on both of their faces as Cathy staggered back to join us. The big woman must have seen it too, because she stared back at them, clutching her hands against her bosom.

Cathy
reluctantly set Violet on her feet, and she immediately rushed over and hugged us both. After telling us a two-minute version of her story, she and Neil began piecing together what had happened to each of them after they had been captured. As different as they looked, they acted like a big brother and his little sister. My heart swelled at the sight of it. With Cathy crouching down next to Violet, listening in, I wandered off. By this time many of the captives had left the camp and were walking away. I couldn’t imagine what had happened to my own family. It just didn’t seem fair.

I briskly walked back to the remains of the gate and waited. With dark rapidly approaching, I knew I had one chance to find them. I would have to wait here and see if they were still inside the compound. I could see that I wasn’t alone and occasionally, someone would scream a name and my dream would come true, for some other family.
Five times this happened and I was just about to scream something myself, when I found myself staring at my father. Behind him walked my mother and my sister and her children. None of them had seen me and I resisted the urge to scream like an excited woman. Dad wouldn’t have liked that. Instead, I casually walked over and stood in their path. The look on Dad’s face was worth a thousand words. He smiled and wiped tears from his eyes. Mom and Cheryl screamed my name in unison and they damn near tackled me where I stood. I have never felt better in my entire life.

We stood there catching up until it was completely dark. Cathy, Neil, and Violet joined us. A passing soldier declared that Minnesota was now U
.N. free all the way from Canada to North Branch. If I could believe him, the entire United States military had declared war on the government and battles were being fought from ocean to ocean. I thanked him for his service and assured him that we’d defend the territory they had liberated.

Someone mentioned that a fleet of school buses had been dispatched to pick us up. While we waited, I explained my situation with Cathy to my dad. He patted me on the back and told me that he couldn’t be happier. Cathy, Violet, and Neil were welcome to stay at the farm for as long as they liked. He even hinted that forever would be fine by him.

A line of buses appeared just then, and the second bus had a hand-drawn sign that announced it was headed to Pine City. We boarded the bus. It quickly filled and soon we were on our way. The bus made several stops along the way, but a little over an hour after we boarded, we were dropped off at the end of our driveway. I was terrified that the bodies would still be hanging in the trees, but all traces of them, even the ropes, were gone. Someone had even come along and buried Gunner and Thor. The next day, I would find their graves out behind the barn. Whoever had buried them had even marked their names with a Sharpie on pieces of scrap lumber pounded into the earth as temporary tombstones.

That night, after Mom had everyone settled in for the night, Dad and I walked down to the barn.
He lit an oil lantern and placed it on the work bench. At the far end of the bench were a pile of rust-colored rags. It took me a minute, but I recognized them as some of the bandages that Violet had used to nurse me back to health. Dad looked as if he had aged ten years since I had last seen him. He made small-talk for a while, but I knew there was something he wanted to say. “I don’t feel safe here,” he said, “not anymore. I spent my whole life believing that we were a part of something. I thought that if we followed the rules, voted, paid our taxes, supported our government, things like this could never happen. What a load of crap.”

“But Dad, you heard the soldiers. They’re fighting to preserve our way of life.
We have to trust that they’ll win this fight.”

“Think about what you just said,” he snapped. “We have to trust them? How in the hell are we supposed to do that? Once a soldier takes up arms against his own people, he can never be trusted again. The same goes for the government. Let’s just say that the military wins this fight. The United Nations troops go home and things go back to normal. We’ll still have Washington to deal with. Do you really believe that things won’t go right back to the way they were? Think about it, son. Even if we could get those lying rats out of office, which will never happen, they’d only be replaced by different rats.
How long will it be before they try it again?”

I thought about that. Dad was right. Unless some serious changes were made in Washington, there was no doubt in my mind that they would try it again. “Okay,” I said, nodding my head, “so what are we supposed to do about it?
If we’re not safe here, where should we go? I don’t see Canada as being an option?”

Dad smiled and shook his head. “No, you don’t understand,” he said, as he sat down on an old milk stool. “We’re not going anywhere. I didn’t pour my life into this farm to be run off by a bunch of damn politicians. What I meant to say was that we need to organize. All of us, every citizen of this country.”

“What,” I asked, “like a union? I thought America was a union?”

Dad scratched his ear and waved his hand in the air. “Ah,” he hissed, “we used to be a union. We used to be a part of something special. Those days are long gone. Look at what’s happened in your lifetime. The corporations and special interests have taken over. Regular folks
, like us, we don’t mean a thing to the people in charge. Oh, they like having us around to pay for everything. But they don’t give a hoot about what we think or how we feel. Every four years they march out two candidates for president, who we know nothing about, and then they sell them as the cream of the crop. What a load of hogwash. They’re both the same and everybody knows it. No, what this country needs is a union within the union. Regular folks, just like us, who will stand together and fight these people when they try to take away what’s ours. These bastards had no business trampling around in our Constitution, none at all. But we stood by and watched as they took a scissors to it, pretending they were protecting us from ourselves. We can’t allow that to happen, not ever again.”

“How are we supposed to do that? Look, I’m with you, but how are we supposed to spread that message and get others to listen?”

Dad shook his head and put his chin in his hands. “I don’t know,” he said, dejectedly. “Things like that are tough to organize. They take big money and I’m afraid we’re about flat broke.”

I had been meaning to tell Dad about the gold, but I was trying to wait for the perfect moment. He’s a man of deep convictions and I was sure that the minute I mentioned the gold, he would insist I
take it back to where it had come from. I knew this was my chance and I gathered my thoughts. “What if we had the money to send out your message?” I asked. “What if we had millions of dollars and wanted to use it to try and organize this union you’re talking about? What would you do?”