The Rift (99 page)

Nick stopped striking only when he ran out of breath. Both Nick and the deputy were spattered with blood.

A cry of savage joy rose in Nick’s heart. He lurched to his feet, brandished the bloody shotgun over his head.
“Warriors!”
he screamed to the heavens.
“Warriorrrrrrrrs!”

The shout was taken up by the other fighters now streaming through the parking lot. Some waved guns, others clubs. The shooting seemed far less intense than it had been, though a shot that snapped over Nick’s head drove him again into a crouch.

He looked down at the deputy lying at his feet and felt his raging triumph die and turn to cold, creeping horror. Dazedly, Nick read the plastic name tag on the deputy’s uniform.
Jedthus C. Carter.
His head swam. He closed his eyes. He had done this, had beaten this man to death with his own weapon.

“Move! Keep moving!” People shouted to each other as they ran through the parking lot.

Nausea eddied through Nick’s vitals. He put the shotgun down. He heard the thud of feet nearby. “Don’t stop!” a woman’s voice shouted close by.

Don’t stop,
Nick repeated to himself.
Don’t stop except to pick up a weapon.
His own rules.

He reached blindly for the deputy’s gun belt. The blood on the leather sent a surge of acid into his throat. His fingers felt thick as sausages as he tried to work the buckle.

“Go! Go!” someone shouted. “Get in the car!”

Go,
Nick thought numbly. He finally got the belt open and pulled on it, rolled the deputy partly over and dragged the free end out from under. He rose to a crouch and stepped clear of the deputy and finally, now that he could look someplace other than the body, dared to open his eyes.

The gun belt dangled heavy from his hand. He saw the deputy’s automatic pistol, a leather case for ammunition, another for hand cuffs, and a portable radio. Keys dangled from a spring-wound key ring.

“Warriors to the cars!” a woman shouted. “Home Guard give them cover!”

Those were Nick’s own rules the woman was shouting. Nick listened dully as he blinked at the radio on his gun belt. Cars rumbled into life. Then Nick strapped the gun belt over his hips and picked up the shotgun and stepped from between the two vehicles, careful to keep his head down and lots of Detroit iron between himself and any likely enemy.

The deputy had a car, he thought. And these keys would fit it. It would be a good car, a fast car. And there would probably be ammunition and other supplies in it.

There was a shot from the southernmost of the two roadblocks, and a horrid scream from somewhere in the parking lot. Another voice began loudly to call on Jesus, a voice with a desperate keening edge that raised Nick’s hackles. Nick bit down on the bile that rose in his throat at the sound, stuck his head up for only a brief instant.

There was only one police car in the area, parked next to one of the two trucks that had been backed up to the gate. During his escape Nick had run right past it without taking notice.

Nick ducked low, ran to the vehicle, and flung himself into the driver’s seat. He kept his head below window level, picked what looked like a car key on the deputy’s key ring, stuck it in the ignition, and turned it.

The engine roared into life like a beast emerging from hibernation. Air-conditioning began to blast cold air. The radio turned on as well.

“Miles,” a voice said, “what’s the situation now?”

“We got people runnin’ all over the camp,” another voice said. “I hear ’em startin’ up some cars. We’re keepin’ their heads down, but I don’t think we got any men left up there.”

“Jedthus?”

“I don’t know, Omar. I ain’t seem him since the ruckus started.”

“How about Knox an’ them?”

“I think they’re all gone, Omar.”

There was a moment of silence. There was a bang from outside the car, then a sort of crunch from the radio, the sound of someone making a fast movement while holding the microphone.

“They’re starting to shoot at us, Omar,” the man said. “I think we may have to pull out.”

“Fuck that,” a third voice said, some distance from the mike. “I got bullets left.”

“I’ll leave it to you guys,” said Omar. “I’m putting a posse together here, but if you think you need to hightail it out of there, you do that.”

Run for it, you crackers,
Nick thought.
Run for it, and we’ll come for you.

“Warriors to the cars!” people were shouting.

Nick opened the car door, stuck his head out, and shouted, “Ready to move! If you’re ready, honk your horn!”

He hit the horn, twice. Other horns began to take up the chorus.

The passenger door opened suddenly. Nick looked up in surprise, heart pounding. A man of thirty or so slid into the passenger seat— Nick knew he was among the Warriors, but didn’t know his name. The man carried a big club and a large revolver, and there was a wild look in his eye.

“I’m ready, man,” he said. “Ready to bust caps on some coneheads.”

“Right,” Nick said.

There was a chorus of horns outside, which Nick hoped were Warriors signaling they were ready, and not people blowing horns out of sheer exuberance.

“Let’s go!” Nick bellowed out the door, and he put the car in reverse and began rolling it across the grass parking lot to the road. “Left and right!” he shouted. “Let’s go!”

He shut the door and looked over his shoulder out the back window. Voices chattered on the radio, and Nick gathered that Omar, whoever he was, was having trouble assembling his scattered forces.
Don’t worry, man,
Nick thought,
we’ll be coming to
you.

Cars bumped onto the road and accelerated. They were heading for the two roadblocks north and south of the camp. The deputies at the roadblocks were armed with high-powered rifles that could kill at a distance, and Nick had reasoned that it was hopeless to shoot it out from the camp with that kind of firepower, not with the sorts of weapons that were likely to be liberated from the guards. Nick planned a vehicle assault, cars filled with Warriors charging the roadblocks to engage the deputies at close range, where the hunting rifles could be outgunned by pistols, shotguns, and if necessary clubs and knives.

Crossing the intervening distance, against those powerful rifles, was desperate. But Nick had already committed the Warriors to death, whether the Warriors themselves realized it or not. Enough of them would get through to kill the deputies, and that was all that mattered.

“Goddamn,” Miles said over the radio. “They’re pullin’ out. They’re heading for us.”

“Clear out if you have to,” Omar said.

The sheriff’s car bounced as it backed onto the road. Nick swung the wheel, turned the car north, in the direction he hoped to help the camp inmates escape. He wanted that route to be open above all. There were already several cars ahead of him. Nick accelerated.

A lengthy series of shots rang out. Nick couldn’t tell who was shooting: the guards or the escapees. Brake lights flashed ahead as the line of cars checked their speed. Nick growled his frustration and tapped the brakes.

One car rammed the roadblock. Cars swerved to the verge of the road, came to a stop. People burst from them, carrying weapons. Then the energy seemed to go out of them— they straightened out of their fighting crouches, let their weapons hang by their sides.

Nick pulled to a stop, ran from the car, and found out why the others had lost interest.

The deputies were already dead. One had been shot through the heart. The other had been hit in the midsection, crawled into the bar ditch, and bled to death.

Cudjo,
Nick thought. Sitting in the woods with his deer rifle, picking off every deputy he could see.

There were crashes of metal-on-metal, a furious roll of gunfire from the other roadblock. Nick straightened, nerves leaping. He’d gone the wrong way.

“Get their guns,” he said. “Get the ammunition. Bring their car.”

By the time Nick got to the other roadblock, the fight was over. The driver of the first car to charge the roadblock had been killed by the rifles and his car spun off the road, but the second rammed the deputies’ car, giving them the choice of jumping into the open or being hit by their own vehicle. The third car in line had hit one of the exposed deputies, throwing him fifty feet. He was hit so hard that he was literally knocked out of his boots. His partner had been run down in the field by a mob and shot to death. He carried a loaded rifle and a loaded pistol, but had been so terrified that he’d forgot to fire either one of them.

Nick got out of his car amid the crowd of fighters. They were jumping up and down, waving their liberated weapons over their heads, howling their victory.

Nick wandered among them, stunned.

He’d won. He’d won.

“Miles,” the radio said. “Miles. What is your situation?”

Nick looked at the car. He got in the car, picked up the microphone, pressed the button on it with his thumb. Tried to still the tremor in his hand.

“Miles is dead, cracker,” he said. “So are the others. What do you have to say to that, cracker?”

There was a moment of stunned silence. “Who
is
that?” said a voice. A voice that wasn’t Omar’s.

Nick felt his lips draw back in a savage snarl. “Jon C. Ruford, brigadier general, U.S. Army,” he said. It was the least he could do in tribute to his father. It was all he could do to avoid mentioning Sun Tzu.

“You think I don’t know about
camps
?” Nick said. “You think I don’t know how to turn people in camps into
soldiers
?”

There was a moment of stunned silence. Nick forced a graveyard laugh.

“We got your friends’ guns, cracker,” Nick said. “We got more guns than
you
do now. You come visit the camp, cracker, and we’ll make you real welcome.”

He put the mike back on its hook.
Let them think we’ll stay here at the camp,
he thought.
Let them think we’re waiting for them.

Please.

*

Fifteen minutes after seven o'clock, we had another shock. This one was the most severe one we have yet had
—
the darkness returned, and the noise was remarkably loud. The first motions of the earth were similar to the preceding shocks, but before they ceased we rebounded up and down, and it was with difficulty we kept our seats. At this instant I expected a dreadful catastrophe
—
the uproar among the people strengthened the colouring of the picture
—
the screams and yells were heard at a great distance.

Extract from a letter to a gentleman in Lexington, from his friend at New Madrid, dated 16th December, 1811

Jason spent the fight huddled beneath a cotton wagon with Arlette, Manon, and a half-dozen other refugees. His nerves leaped with every shot, every cry, every moan or scream.

He was glad to leave this business to the grownups.

At the start, right after the earth shuddered to the detonation of the claymore mines, gunfire broke out all around the camp as Nick’s Samurai, with three handguns and one .22 rifle, opened fire on the six guards distributed around the back and sides of the camp. One guard was killed, another wounded, and a third fled unhurt. Two Samurai were killed when guards returned fire. Bullets sprayed the camp, whining eerily as they tumbled after striking parts of the chainlink fence.

Cudjo, by shooting two guards from cover with his deer rifle, turned the tide. Fighters eagerly slipped under the chainlink to seize the dead guards’ weapons. The remaining guards were killed as they ran for their lives across the adjoining fields.

Jason hugged Arlette during the battle, both of them on the ground, his cheek against the nape of her neck. It wasn’t romantic, it wasn’t tender; it was two terrified people doing their best to disappear into each other and into the ground. He could feel Arlette gasp at each cracking shot, shiver as buzzing bullets tumbled past. As the cars rolled out of the parking lot and the fighting moved farther away, he could feel her begin to breathe easier.

“It’ll be all right,” he whispered. For what it was worth.

She squeezed his hand, nodded. Pretending that he had reassured her, while tears rolled down her cheeks.

They stayed hidden until they heard cars returning, until the shooting was long ended and people started calling for everyone to come out of hiding. Jason rose into the long-shadowed day, and his heart gave a sudden leap of joy. He had lived through it. He would see another day.

“Take your belongings and go to the parking lot! Take some food with you if you can!”

Jason took his telescope, his only remaining property, from beneath the cotton wagon and joined the others as they marched toward the exit. There were bodies lying on the ground near the gate, all displaying that limp, careless, boneless sprawl that let Jason know these were real bodies and not actors in some movie. Manon took Arlette and Jason firmly by the shoulders and marched them quickly through the area, though Jason couldn’t help but look at the bodies to discover if any of them were Nick. One of the bodies, he saw, was that of Sekou, one of the boys who had given Arlette grief for kissing Jason.

Jason tore his eyes from the corpse and looked straight ahead. He didn’t want to think about Sekou, about how the boy had died fighting while Jason had huddled beneath the wagon.

When they came out of the camp, they found Nick in the parking area. He was wearing a gun belt, leaning on a shotgun, and giving orders. He looked like a highly successful field marshal in charge of some dreadful, highly personal African bush war. Jason gave a cry of elation. Arlette raced up to him and flung her arms around him.

“Baby!” he said, and lifted Arlette off her feet as he hugged her. Then he carried Arlette to Manon and threw an arm around his ex as well.

“Nick!” she said, eyes wide with horror. “You’re covered with blood!”

“It’s, uh, not mine,” Nick said. A shadow passed over the joy that glowed in his eyes. He turned to Arlette. “Careful, honey, you might get some on you.”

“I don’t care,” Arlette said.

He lowered her to the ground. Nick saw Jason, and a smile crossed his face. “Hey, Jase,” he said.