“How far is our jurisdiction?”
“As far as we want it to be. When’s the last time you saw a county sheriff’s car or one of those punk-ass staties?”
“I haven’t,” replied David.
“Exactly. Dad says it’s up to us, so here we go. Get in the truck.”
Nathan closed the door and started the engine, sensing that David’s line of questioning would continue. He leaned forward to draw the pistol tucked into the waistband of his jeans just as David opened his mouth.
“I thought your dad was talking about the militia being in charge. I don’t think—”
Nathan jammed the barrel of the semiautomatic pistol into David’s cheek. “You don’t think what?” he said, fixing a murderous stare.
David shook his head, mumbling, “I’m sorry, man. I promise—”
“This is your last warning, dude. Dad left me with full authority to do what needs to be done around here. He’s a full colonel in the militia, right under my granddad. Why the hell do you think he gave me this car? To run errands? Use your head, man—or fucking lose it. I’m serious,” he said, easing the pressure on David’s cheek.
“All right. Let’s do this,” said David.
“I do all the talking. Play this right, and one of those bitches will be bobbing on your knob. Ain’t nothing free in this world anymore. Gotta pay a toll to use the roads around here,” said Nathan, grinning wickedly.
“I can handle that. I’d love to work those twins over,” said David, touching the denim bulge forming in his pants.
“Don’t get greedy. You keep fucking up and it’ll be one of the boys,” said Nathan.
“I don’t care who it is,” said David. “Let’s get this on!”
“That’s better,” said Nathan, shifting the car into drive.
***
Shit.
Kate glanced at the grocery store parking lot again. The sight of two men surveying their group with binoculars made her nervous. They could be waiting for someone to arrive via the same route, or they might be keeping an eye out for trouble. The mess of beer cans near the light post suggested otherwise.
Keep pedaling.
The parking lot would be out of view within a few minutes.
“Kate! They’re coming!” yelled Samantha.
Of course they were. She slowed her bike and watched the black SUV speed across the parking lot toward the shopping center exit fifty feet ahead of her group.
“Linda?” said Kate.
“Got it covered,” replied Linda.
Kate cruised half of the distance to the exit and stopped, dismounting her bike. She swung her rifle forward on its two-point sling, and tried to remember how Linda taught her to transition quickly to a forward position. She knew the strap would switch shoulders, but beyond that she didn’t have enough practice with the maneuver to do it correctly on the first try. The BMW SUV careened onto Route 5 and skidded to a halt twenty feet ahead.
Screw this.
She pushed her AR-15 back into position on her back and unsnapped her holster. At this range, she could probably do more damage with her Sig Sauer.
She risked a quick glance back at the group. They looked more exhausted than alarmed by the sudden appearance of the SUV. Linda had already transitioned her rifle and was approaching swiftly along the center median line, keeping her distance from the kids. She knew what she was doing, which was more than Kate could say about the situation. She noticed Ethan fiddling with one of the side pockets on his rucksack. He had pulled the pack off one shoulder.
“Ethan, leave it in the pack. Same for you, Emily,” said Kate.
She heard Linda give the same warning to her daughters, whom Kate knew for a fact were armed. Even the Walker kids carried firearms, though they had never been trained to fire one. If things deteriorated into a gunfight, Kate and Linda would buy the group enough time to find cover, while Samantha helped the kids put the rest of the group’s weapons into action. She turned back to the SUV just as the front doors opened.
Black motorcycle boots and shit-kicker jeans appeared to be the uniform of the day for their welcoming committee. She guessed early to mid twenties, but they both wore that hardened, “up to no good” expression that made it difficult to tell. The passenger swayed a bit after standing. He looked dumber than a rock garden. Drunk and dumb didn’t mix well in serious situations, and this was about as serious as any situation would ever get for these two.
The driver stepped around the hood, staring her down with beady eyes and a twisted smirk. A black semiautomatic pistol grip protruded from his jeans. Beady Eyes was the dangerous one. He would be the first to die if this went badly—and she expected it to. She could think of no logical reason why these two dipshits would suddenly pull out in front of them. They wanted something, and five seconds of observation made it clear that they didn’t want the bicycles. Rock Garden hadn’t taken his eyes off Linda’s twins since he blundered out of the BMW. This would definitely end badly, especially if Linda figured out what Rock Garden had in mind.
“Afternoon, ladies. Nathan Russell. Part of the militia in charge of the area,” he said, resting his hands on his hips—dangerously close to the pistol.
“We’re gonna have to ask you to surrender those rifles and consent to a search. We can’t have people running around with weapons—uh—in the area.”
“I’m pretty familiar with the state’s firearms laws, and there’s no problem here. If you don’t mind, we have a long day ahead of us,” said Kate.
“But there is a problem. We’ve been given authority to make decisions about these kinds of things,” said Beady Eyes, drawing a quick look from Rock Garden.
“Who gave you this authority?” said Linda, straining to keep her rifle barrel pointed down.
“The local commander,” said Beady Eyes. “So I need you to clear those weapons, and we’ll get you on your way.”
“Unless you want to pay the toll,” said Rock Garden with an eager look.
Beady Eyes silenced him with a deadly glare.
“We’re not travelling with any money,” said Kate.
“There’s other ways to pay,” muttered Rock Garden.
Mouth open, he glared at Linda’s twins. Kate slowly moved her hand back along her thigh, feeling the nylon holster and mentally picturing the draw. She’d give them one more chance.
“We’re gonna get moving now. I think you should drive back to the parking lot and enjoy the rest of your beers. It’s a beautiful day. Be a real shame to ruin it,” she stated.
Beady Eyes shifted his right hand toward the pistol. “Nobody’s going anywhere until I—”
The blast from Linda’s rifle punched a small red dot through the center of his forehead. Kate drew her pistol and dropped to one knee, firing rapidly at Rock Garden’s head and chest. His head snapped backward moments before blasts from Linda’s rifle punctured his torso and shattered the window behind him. She shifted her aim to Beady Eyes, who remained upright, staring blankly past her at the kids. His mouth mumbled something unintelligible as he slowly sank down the side of the vehicle and tumbled forward to the blistering pavement.
Emily screamed, setting off a chain reaction of panic and hysteria among the teenagers. Kate’s vision narrowed to the tiny red hole in the front of his head. The hole was so perfect. The shrieking faded into a high-pitched ringing. Someone grabbed her arm.
“You all right, Kate? We need to get out of here! Can you stand?” said a familiar voice.
She broke her fixation on the trickle of blood flowing from the bullet entry wound, and turned her head to the sound. Linda stood over her, trying to pull her up. Everything snapped back into place. She thumbed the decocking lever on her pistol and holstered it.
“We need to load up right now!” Linda ordered. “We’re taking the car!”
“Everyone’s all right?” asked Kate.
“Everyone except for those two. Find the keys. I’ll get the kids in the car,” she said.
Linda glanced behind her and saw the kids cowering behind their bicycles. She pulled at her frantic daughters, urging them to get in the SUV.
Emily threw her bike down and rushed forward, crying. “I want to go home, Mommy!”
“We’ll be fine, sweetie,” Kate said to her. “We’ll be at Nana and Grandpa’s house in thirty minutes. I need you to get in the car now. Don’t look at anything but the car. Can you do that?”
Emily nodded and buried her head in Kate’s right shoulder.
“We need to get moving,” said Linda.
Kate kissed her daughter. “I love you. Get your pack off, and get in the car.”
Emily nodded, staring past her mother at the dead body. She started crying again and grabbed Kate.
“I’ll hold you later. Promise. Follow Mrs. Thornton around the back of the car,” Kate said, pushing her daughter toward the rest of the kids.
“Let’s go! In the car! Now!” yelled Linda, pulling Samantha, who looked more shell-shocked than her kids.
“Should we hide the bikes?” asked Kate.
“No time for that. We have witnesses,” said Linda, pointing to the Hannigans shopping complex.
Kate saw at least a half-dozen people lurking near the intersection, peering in their direction.
“Shit. I’ll move the bodies,” said Kate, placing her rifle and backpack against the hood of the SUV.
She grabbed Beady Eyes by his dusty boots and dragged him to the side of the road, leaving a slippery trail of gore on the hot asphalt surface. A pinkish-gray lump clung stubbornly to the road, stretching from the top of his skull. She shook her head.
I didn’t see that.
Her stomach wasn’t convinced, exploding a brownish-yellow stream onto his jeans. She kept pulling. Another involuntary spray hit the gravel on the shoulder of the road. Kate felt grass beneath her and dropped his legs, breathing heavily.
How can you push something like this out of your head?
You couldn’t. Not according to her husband. You pressed on and dealt with it later. They were counting on her to do that.
“All right. You can do this,” she mumbled to herself.
She removed the pistol from Beady Eyes’ waistline, ejecting the magazine and racking the slide to eject the chambered round. She cocked her arm to throw the pistol into the closest drainage ditch, but stopped. No reason to give the weapon back to the same community that had produced these two pieces of shit. Kate tucked it into her belt and searched for a wallet and keys. She examined his license and exhaled. Just what they didn’t need. A Waterboro local. And the other one?
“Ethan, you don’t have to do that!” said Kate, running on rubbery legs back to the SUV.
Ethan had started to pull Rock Garden away from the car by his armpits.
“I can handle it, Mom—Aunt Kate,” said Ethan.
A weak fountain of blood pulsed from a jagged hole in the back of Rock Garden’s neck, emptying into the scarlet pool beneath Ethan’s boots. He stared at the blood for a few seconds before dropping the body on the pavement. She hugged him while he sobbed.
“It’ll be okay, Ethan. We’re almost at Nana’s.”
“I know why you killed them.” He sniffled. “I saw them looking at the girls.”
Kate searched for a parental line to soften Ethan’s harsh induction into their “kill or be killed” world. She drew a complete blank.
“We won’t let anything happen to you guys. Understand?” she said, locking eyes with him.
He nodded, wiping his eyes and putting on a tough face.
“Can you help everyone get into the car?”
“I want to learn how to shoot like that,” announced Ethan.
“You’ll have to talk to your uncle. He taught me how to shoot,” said Kate.
“I thought he couldn’t hit anything with a pistol?”
“He’s better than he cares to admit,” said Kate, kneeling next to the body. “Get going.”
She fished a wallet out of Rock Garden’s back pocket and held up another blood-smeared Maine driver’s license. Wonderful. Another local.
“Forget moving that one! They’re starting to take pictures,” said Linda, pointing at the crowd back at the intersection.
Kate helped Ethan squeeze into place next to Samantha’s son and handed him his rucksack. Samantha passed two more backpacks to Kate, which she stuffed into the cargo area against the boys. Less than a minute later, the SUV peeled off down Route 5 toward Limerick.
Chapter 31
EVENT +32:50 Hours
Limerick, Maine
Kate had made this trip enough times to recognize the landmarks as they approached, but nothing seemed familiar. Nothing at all.
Linda, who was driving, glanced at her. “You all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just not sure…we may have passed it. If we see a ‘Welcome to Parsonsfield’ sign, we definitely missed it.”
“We haven’t hit that yet,” she said. “Let me know if I need to slow down.”
Linda could sense that she was off. Kate saw it in her eyes. Maybe they all knew it. She didn’t think so. Only Linda would be attuned to what transpired after the shootout. Kate had momentarily shut down. At least she hadn’t frozen when it counted most. She pictured the gun draw in her head, and training took over when Linda’s bullet evacuated the kid’s skull. She barely remembered firing at the second kid—had no recollection of hitting him in the face.
“I know it’s .37 miles past the only cemetery on the road,” said Kate.
“We just passed that,” said Samantha.
“There it is, right?” said Linda, slowing the SUV in front of the entrance to an unmarked dirt road.
Kate squinted. “Yep. That’s it. It’s the only road on the left.”
I can’t believe I missed that.
She needed this funk to pass quickly. The group depended on her leadership—or so she had been told. Maybe she wasn’t the best person to make decisions for the group. Stupid thought. She couldn’t exactly put Linda in charge of the compound—but she would certainly put Linda in charge of their security.
Linda turned the car onto Gelder Pond Lane, taking the dirt road at a reasonable speed. Kate glanced back. They had five people jammed into the rear bench, which was two more than capacity. Samantha, who had given up the front seat to let Kate navigate, was crushed under her daughter on the right side, with Linda’s twins compressed on the left. This left Emily stuffed between them in the middle, buried under three of their backpacks.