Pilliars in the Fall (7 page)

Crap.

I gave Blake a quick “What the hell?” look, and stepped plainly out onto the road, headed in their direction. We were found out and had only two options, run, or see just what was going on.

“Stay out of sight and cover me,” I covertly spoke into the little radio microphone clipped to my jacket.

“Car trouble?” I waved, trying to look and sound as friendly as possible, walking nonchalantly over the short stretch of road.

“Yes, can you help us please?” one of the girls purred.

“Maybe, I’m not much good with mechanics,” I half lied. Honestly no matter what was wrong with their car, I knew there would be very little I could do to fix it out here. Also though, something just didn’t seem right.

“Not exactly dressed right for the weather are you?” I stated and they giggled.

They both had on tight fitting jean pants that rode low on their hips. The taller of the two wore a faded crème colored tank-top under a light zip up sweatshirt, although it was currently unzipped and pulled back. The bottom of her tank top stopped before her jeans started, allowing a ribbon of white skin to be shown off. The other girl had on a mostly unbuttoned flannel shirt that was loosing the fight of trying to contain a generous amount of exposed cleavage. The tight fitting clothes combined with the weather gave a few obvious visual indicators that they had been out in the cold for a while now, if you know what I mean.

Along with their dress, their makeup and hair was done just a little too much and without gloves on, I could see their fingernails were painted and well manicured. They were decent enough looking young women, not exactly the cheerleader type, probably more likely to have hung out with the emo or punk crowd.

“You don’t happen to have any food do you?” the one with the cleavage filled flannel asked, raising her voice an extra octave.

The scene was simple enough. Two naive young women stranded on a semi rural road...so what was it that was out of place? I thought I was probably just imaging things until I walked past the windows of the car and glanced inside. As I went toward the open hood, I quickly caught sight of jackets, hats, gloves, and a few bags stuffed in and around the seats. What I really noticed was the bags had been packed to leave room enough for a driver and three passengers.

“Sorry, I’ve been out hunting all day and haven’t seen a thing,” I said as I casually un-slung the Garand from my shoulder, letting it point downward and rest non-threateningly in both hands.

“Well there’s definitely a problem here…” I said without really looking under the car hood and scanning more past the two girls at the surrounding area, and keying my radio microphone at the same time.

“You’re telling me,” a slightly high pitched male voice came from the far side of the road.

“Two guys at your
ten o’clock, twenty yards, armed with… oh you’re going to love this… a sword and a crossbow,” Blake’s hushed voice said into my ear.

Sure enough, from the bushes covering a drainage ditch on the far side of the road, two figures were emerging. I backed up a step in time to see one of them slightly struggling with a branch that was holding him back from making his smooth entrance.

They were a threat and I did turn to meet them head on, but I hadn’t yet raised my gun. In reality, I was very guilty of downplaying the danger that these two could be to me, even with their retro sci-fi type weapons. It helped knowing that Blake had them squarely in his scope too.  

The skinny guy with long hair, complete with a brown cape and hood, had a cheap mail-order crossbow on his shoulder. His partner, the overweight nerd sporting some very stylish glasses and what was probably an overgrown bowl cut, was blocking a clear shot at me as he walked in front of his skinny companion.

“Look guys, I don’t want any trouble,” I said as a fact when they seemed to be looking more for a scared plea. As soon as I had seen them, I was able to put all the pieces together and figured out the situation right away. They were probably the picked on outsiders and nerds at school, and now they were looking to be the bullies themselves. The problem was, they didn’t know how to be.

My confidence and lack of fear seemed to throw them off. The fat kid’s face flushed angrily and he started yelling.

“Drop everything you have! Lay that gun down and hand that pack over or we’ll kill you!” he threatened.

“Guys I’m telling you, this is not a good idea,” I implored sternly.

“Shut up!” he screamed at me, still reading right out of the comic book playbook of How to Control a Hostage.

“I’m just saying this is not going to work out well for anybody,” I again calmly tried to resolve the situation. This was stupid, pointless and I knew it could quickly get out of hand.

“Yeah and why not?” the taller girl interjected arrogantly. The tension was starting to boil up, but I didn’t feel like we were on the knife edge just yet, so I kept going, easily keeping my composure.  

“Because believe me, I am the last guy you want to try this with,” I said cold and quietly. “You all need to understand that this is not a game, and I am not playing. You keep this up, and someone is going to die. Your best bet is to drop this right now and go home.”

I knew they wouldn’t. Even dorks have pride that can overcome their good senses.

“I said drop your shit right now!” the fat kid yelled again and took another step in my direction. Just a little closer and I would be in range of his dumb, but still deadly, fantasy sword. Of course that would put him in range of me, and if they kept this up, I would turn a lot more violent than a cheap thin piece of metal and the nerd holding it could ever imagine, but I still didn’t want that to happen.
 

“You know what being dead is? It’s not just dark or quiet or black, it is
not existing
. Think about that for a second, you will stop
being
,” I tried getting through to them again.

“Only one that’s going to die here is you if you keep talkin’,” The fat kid said in his worked up state. Over his shoulder I could see his skinny friend was having doubts. His eyes were darting from side to side and he looked pale. Well, pale for a basement dweller anyway.

“Let’s just do this and get out of here!” one of the girls said from off to the side.

“Kid is cutting the angle, get some space so I can keep a clear lane,” Blake spoke to me through the radio.

“Look, let’s everybody calm down,” I backed up slowly, staying painfully careful to make no sudden movements with my hands that were still holding the heavy rifle. I really didn’t think these kids fully knew how bad this was, and I was still hoping to talk my way through it. There was no way I wanted to hurt them over something as dumb as this was shaping up to be.

"I'm not kidding man, drop your shit or we'll drop you!" the fat kid said and glanced over his shoulder to the one with the crossbow who followed him up with a squeaky "Yeah!"

“Good…” Blake coached my movements. “Now how much more of this shit are you going to listen to?”

He was
right; it was time to find a way to get out of here.

“So who's the brains here? Who came up with this genius plan?” I looked at each one of them quickly. “And what next? Keep robbing people who have nothing more than you do until… what? Is this going to get you somewhere in life where you can be retarded kings and slutty queens and not have to worry about the jokes and ridicule ever again?”

I wasn’t ever exactly a bully, but I did know how to aggravate people, and even when I was younger, guys like this I could piss off in my sleep.

“Is this going how you thought it would?" I pushed them. "Is your Lord of the Rings wet dream coming true? Who the hell do you think you are doing this, huh?”

Aggravating a group of people intent on robbing me was strangely ironic as I insulted
their
intelligence.

“I’m
Robin Hood bitch!” the fat kid exclaimed.

“Would everyone just shut up!” the chick with the big rack yelled again.

“I don’t care if you
are
Robin Hood’s bitch…” I purposely mis-stated, ignoring the girl.

“Look we’re…”

“Quit pissing them off for a second. I’m moving closer,” Blake’s voice in my ear interrupted my thoughts.

“And you two are supposed to be what, the distractions?" I continued on. "Reel them in and then let the boys take over? Bet you think you're real good at getting guys to do what you want them to."

“It worked on you didn’t it” The less chesty girl sounded insulted.

“Eh, you’re not even one of the good looking emo girls, just one of the poor frumpy ones that can’t hang out with the cool rejects.”

“Hey!” the rail of a semi pubescent youth with a crossbow came to her defense.

“Oh don’t tell me you’re hitting that. Naw, you're probably just her brother or gay friend... or at least that’s all you’ll ever be to her.”

I was hitting raw nerves now, just waiting for one of them to initiate a fistfight so I could put them on the ground without permanently hurting any of them.

“In place, twenty yards and up at your
three o’clock,” Blake came back over the radio again.

Turning to the skinny little wannabe archer, I took a huge gamble. “Do you even know how to shoot that thing? I mean, can you hit anything with it?”

“Of course I can!” he exclaimed, pulling the trigger and placing a miniature arrow into a six inch thick tree a few feet off the road.  

I couldn’t believe he actually fired his one shot at a freaking tree and not right into me, but he was smart enough to be reloading already and I knew time had just about run out.

“You guys want to see a magic trick?” I asked the little group, changing gears from out of nowhere.

“SHUT UP!” the fat kid screamed at me.

“Blake,” I said out loud and immediately a window of the car poked and splintered with the impact of a high speed bullet traveling through it. The sound made all four of them jump. I had been hoping to scare them into submission; instead it had the reverse effect and escalated things out of my control. That was just my luck.

“Everybody just back off!” I ordered.

“What?”

“Holy shi…”

The kids were exclaiming. Their surprise was cut short as the skinny kid had finished reloading and was bringing the crossbow back up to fire at me. I was already moving, sliding around to his side. I was about to launch a full tackle to put him down when a second shot from Blake sent the majority of the blood and brain matter in his head spraying across the remaining windows of the car.

Now I was the surprised one.

Between cries of fear, yells of anger, and screams of horror from the two girls, the big kid charged the few steps between us. He gallantly raised his sword to swing it down on me, but the wide, desperate stroke never fell. Regretfully, my Garand put two powerful 168 grain bullets through his chest. If Blake’s shot hadn’t have killed the first kid, mine would have as they traveled all the way through the fat kid and impacted the skinny one's body as it lifelessly crumpled to the ground.

“You two back off, now!” I yelled at the girls, who to their credit were not completely shocked beyond all functioning.

“Get down here,” I yelled to Blake and the girls took a couple tentative steps backwards. I then moved to kick the sword and crossbow out of everyone's reach and as soon as my attention was momentarily diverted to securing the weapons, they snapped into action.

It seems as though I had miscalculated their part in all this. The girls were not the timid pawns in this scheme, they were the masterminds. Active role players and as women can so often be, these two were understatedly perilous.

They both rushed at me from two directions, not running away as I would have expected. I didn’t hear any words exchanged and never even caught so much as a look between them; they just came right for my jugular, literally. The draw of the knife from the hip of the stacked girl drew most of my attention. I was on my heels now, taken by surprise by the unexpected move from the two, and I was within their reach much too quickly.

I needed precious distance from the knife and had only one card to play as I drove the length of my long rifle upward, aiming at the blur of a female face as it got within range. The gun whispered by, missing her chin. The quick reaction from me at least slowed her down and got her off balance as she leaned away to avoid the strike. One on one I had a chance, against the two of them together, armed, they could very well kill me.

Taking a step into the one already off balance, the Garand’s barrel buried itself in a perfect bayonet-less thrust that doubled her over onto the ground. Her less busty partner was also momentarily caught off guard, finally slowing, and maybe second guessing their actions after witnessing the violence of my hit. She quickly took the worst of the two blows when I butt stroked her square in the face.

Small rocks and dust preceded Blake down the hill above the road as he rushed to join me. From the corner of my eye I caught the movement from the first girl who while hurt, had recovered enough to flip the small knife in her hand to get what I recognized as a throwing grip.