A Warrior's Journey (31 page)

At least fifteen vessels were roaring down
the road towards his vantage point. Talaric pulled a long barreled
weapon out of the bag he had brought with him from the mansion. He
may be unschooled in the weapons of this world, but he was a quick
study and it wasn’t all that complex really.

Resting the barrel in the crook of a tree he
sighted through the crystal glass that brought the distance in
closer to him. Aiming where the driver would be in the lead vessel
he pulled the trigger. The lead vehicle spun out to the side and
crashed into a tree. Talaric kept firing until the weapon was
empty. He had managed to take out two more vehicles with the
rifle.

One vehicle took out a fourth vehicle, as it
spun out of control. The other eleven vehicles kept coming as they
swerved around the crashed one. They were approaching a narrow
bridge over a stream that ran down the valley. It was time for a
different approach to the situation. Putting the rifle to the side
he pulled the heaviest item out of the bag.

He had a pretty good idea that if the long
string of bullets was any indicator this weapon fired a lot of the
deadly projectiles very quickly. Talaric folded out the support
legs of the weapon and then laid down on the ground and sighted in
on the vehicles approaching the bridge. Pulling the trigger Talaric
held onto the wildly jumping gun.

Wow!

This weapon was awesome!

The first vehicle blew up right on the
bridge followed closely by the second and third vehicles. With the
bridge hopelessly blocked the remaining vehicles stopped and their
occupants dove to either side of the roadway in search of
cover.

The evidence of return fire began pinging
off the trees and dirt all around Talaric. Paying no attention to
the harbingers of death pinging all around him Talaric concentrated
on destroying the last of the vehicles. The weapon clicked empty.
Grabbing it up mindful of the hot barrel Talaric scooted back out
of view. It was time to go.

There would be no more pursuit of the others
for at least a little while. After stashing the weapons back in the
bag he then slung it over his shoulder and headed south down
through the forest. He didn’t know what may lay ahead of him, but
with the Creator’s help he would conquer it and complete the
mission, whatever it may be.

Evette was driving and I almost wished that
I was instead, as the wheels screeched and the SUV leaned heavy
over to one side, as we pulled out of yet another curve in the
road.

Evette was driving like she was trying to
leave something else behind other than just the pursuers in our
wake. Eventually she did slow her pace down some and I think we all
relaxed a little. We didn’t stop except to change drivers and fill
the SUV up from the cans in the back.

The second evening had us close to the coast
once more. Evette was driving, as she looked over at Larc and said,
“We can’t go back to the same beach you landed on. They know about
it and they’ll have it under heavy surveillance.”

Larc considered what she had said for a
moment, “Is there a town near there where we could get a boat
from?”

“There’s one just a few miles on up the
road, but once we steal a boat they’ll be onto us. We need to
create a diversion of some kind.”

Larc nodded and looked back out the window
to his right.

What kind of diversion would successfully
lead the Committee off our trail? Our means of creating a diversion
were severely limited anyway I looked at it. It was going to be a
near thing if we managed to pull off this last part of the mission
successfully. I became weighed down in my mind as all the possible
bad outcomes of this stage of the mission occurred to me in a
repeating litany of bad news.

In the need to divert my mind I refocused on
the written encouragement and wisdom of the book spread open in
Orhanin’s lap. It was everything we had always thought it was. Life
itself in written form. Whoever hadn’t been driving had been
fighting for a spot beside Orhanin or peering over his shoulder in
order to read the book of the Creator’s words.

Orhanin hadn’t let go of the Bible since
receiving it and I didn’t blame him, but it was irritating when he
kept turning the pages before I had a chance to read it all!

Oh well once copies were made I would have a
copy all to myself and I would read it at my own pace.

Late afternoon saw us pulling into a small
sleepy fishing town that lay only a couple of miles up the coast
from the beach that we had landed on. That felt like it was so long
ago now, because so much had happened since then.

We drove through the town down to the wharf
district. An old abandoned looking warehouse loomed up before us
and we pulled up to it. Thannic and I got out and after first
looking to make sure no one was around we opened one of the
warehouse’s big doors and Larc drove the SUV inside. We closed the
doors quickly.

The warehouse was empty and there was little
to do other than wait for night time to come. Tonight was one of
the pickup nights. I feared that if we weren’t successful in
getting back on the space vessel tonight it was even more unlikely
that we would succeed in surviving to attempt it again in four more
days.

Once word reached the coast of what had
happened in Loch Lynn Heights, the Committee might perhaps redouble
their efforts to catch us. It was extremely doubtful whether we
would be able to remain unnoticed under that heightened awareness
for four more days.

Two hours slowly passed by, which seemed
like an eternity to me.

Something just didn’t feel right. I was
tenser than all get out and I had no reason to be. The others were
grouped around Orhanin, all of them reading even the little kids,
who I was pretty certain couldn’t read, but were just trying to act
like the grown-ups were. Larc glanced at me and I looked back at
him.

He shrugged his shoulder as if to say
“What’s wrong?”

I spread my hands wide, as if to indicate,
“That I didn’t know.”

Larc nodded and pointed up.

I understood. He wanted me to go up into the
upper warehouse levels and have a look around. Heading up I walked
over to a ladder and started to climb up. The second floor had to
be almost thirty feet above the bottom for. When I got to it I saw
that it was as empty and devoid of life, as the bottom floor
was.

I started to walk along the side of the
warehouse facing the ocean. Everything seemed okay. There was a
small vessel headed this way, as if it intended on docking on the
wharf near the warehouse. I studied it for a moment, but it was
still a ways off and I couldn’t tell much about it.

I continued walking around until I got to
the other side of the warehouse. Something caught my eye. The
reflection of some flashing light off of a window two streets away
glinted back at me and then I saw them coming.

What looked to be at least two hundred men
dressed in black were making their way stealthily down the side
streets coming toward the warehouse. Some instinct, I couldn’t have
explained if I had tried to, caused me to look up and to the
right.

There on a nearby roof was another of the
men laying down and he was aiming something at me. I threw myself
to the side only moments before the window in front of me shattered
and I felt my right arm jerked hard by something unseen.

The pace of the men in the street had
quickened with the firing of the shot. I dimly registered all of
this as I turned and half ran and fell at the same time to get to
the opening between the two floors. The wine of angry projectiles
hitting the warehouse was all around me, as if someone had kicked
over a hornet’s nest.

Larc and the others below were piling into
the SUV.

“No!” I yelled.

Larc looked up.

“They’ve got the roads blocked off. You
can’t get away that way. The only way is to get up here. Now!”

Larc yelled something and the others piled
back out of the SUV and took to the ladders. Orhanin and Thannic
made it to the top floor first each with a screaming kid in tow. I
couldn’t blame the children.

The second floor was a nightmare of
shattering glass and whining killer bees. It was a miracle that we
weren’t being hit by them. Just as Evette and Larc made the second
floor their arrival was heralded by explosions from the first
floor, as doors and walls alike were blown inward.

Black clad men stormed into the lower level
guns blazing. Drawing the weapon that I had taken from the mansion
with my left hand I fired it into their pressed masses and saw
several of them go down, as the echo of my shots were duplicated by
Larc’s gun, as he too fired.

The men below spotting us on the second
floor issued forth a hail of bullets that forced us back from the
edge of the overlook.

Choking on stirred up dust and smoke I
yelled, “Follow me!” as I ran down the wharf side of the
warehouse.

At the far end of the warehouse was an open
bay door with a cable that ran overhead through it out over a side
alley and onto the roof of an adjacent one story warehouse.
Reaching the cable I picked up a piece of old chain and thrust it
into Orhanin’s hands.

He knew what to do with it. Flipping it over
the cable, with the little girl hanging on for dear life, Orhanin
jumped off the platform holding onto both ends of the chain.
Thannic and the little boy followed suit moments later. Evette just
stood there staring at me like she thought I was crazy, maybe I
was.

Larc pushed her forward, as I flung another
chain up and over the cable. She hesitantly put her hands on the
chain ends, when I yelled at her to do so and before she was ready
or could object Larc pushed her out the doorway.

Evette’s scream of terror sounded out
clearly above all the other pandemonium going on around us. One or
both of us was going to pay for that.

Larc was handing me a chain, but I yelled
pointing at the Bible, “That’s more important than both of us! Go,
I’ll cover you!”

With a look of reluctance Larc flicked the
chain over the cable and was out the door with the Bible in tow.
Awkwardly I flipped the chain I held over the cable above. Finding
a piece of metal tubing on the floor I jammed it through the two
links of the chain and grabbed a hold of it with my left hand. My
right arm hurt too badly to try to hold onto anything like what
holding onto the chain ends entailed.

I had transferred the gun to my right hand
earlier, which was covered in my own blood now. Grimly I wondered
if the weapon would still work. Glancing back I saw that the men in
black had made it to the second floor and I managed to lift my arm
enough to fire off several shots, the recoil from each shot hurting
my arm abominably, but I saw a couple of the enemy fly back into
space to crash onto the ground floor below.

I jumped off the platform holding onto the
metal pipe awkwardly, as I wind milled around in the air in my
descent towards the other warehouse. The place where I had been
standing only moments before was riddled with bullets.

I was flying backwards and unable to tell
where I was heading and my landing would have been much worse if it
hadn’t been for Larc half catching me out of the air, when I was
overtop the other warehouse’ s roof.

The others were already inside as I and Larc
raced toward the stairway off of the roof. We both saw something
then that neither of us had ever seen before. What looked like a
giant one eyed bug was hovering in mid air up ahead of us.

The fire of guns mounted to it began to
bloom orange flames and I expected to feel the slice of the hot
metal into me in the next instance as I had in my arm, but the
bullets didn’t come close to us. They rang out overhead of us and
briefly craning my head back to see I watched as the stream of
bright lighted death cut the men in black practically in half, as
they stood on the platform in the process of taking aim on us.

They were firing on their own men?

What was going on here?

Whatever it was I was grateful, because
without the intervention of the mechanical one eyed beast we would
be dead, of that I was sure. Gaining the ground floor we reached
the others. This strange occurrence of friendly fire was occurring
street level as well, as men in mottled green and brown uniforms
were firing unmercifully into the dwindling ranks of men in black,
who were retreating to the same warehouse we had just escaped
from.

Evette answered the question on everyone’s
mind as to what was going on outside. “The military is mounting an
attack on the Committee forces. They’re trying to take over control
of the Federation!”

Larc spoke, “I don’t care what they’re
trying to do! What’s important is that there giving us the
diversion we need to get away from here! Come on!”

Larc led the way through the warehouse to
the far end. Gaining the street side of it we dashed across, hidden
it seemed from the larger confrontation taking place around us.
Larc ran down a narrow space between two more warehouses that was
barely wide enough to fit a man width wise.

Coming out on the other side I saw the dock
before us and the ship I had seen earlier. It must belong to the
navy because I could see a rather large looking gun sitting above
the cab of the ship.

Evette was beside me with a look of
determination on her face, “Give me your gun!”

She more or less had to take it from my
hand, because I couldn’t lift my arm up anymore. Running past me
she snatched the gun out of Larc’s waistband and ran on past toward
where the boat was docked. Larc half yelled in surprise and started
to run after her, but he stopped as he was holding the little girl
that Orhanin had taken to calling Lucy.