The day after: An apocalyptic morning (29 page)

              "Are you sure, Christine?" Jack's voice called down.

              She nodded, positioning herself to run. She took a few deep breaths and gathered her courage and then gave Jack one more signal. The go signal.

              Jack began firing down into the rocks, several shots a second, giving her covering fire so she could move. Again the sparks began to fly and the bullets to ping and ricochet around. Rock chips exploded upward. As soon as she heard the first shot, Christine broke from behind her tree and sprinted to the left and slightly forward, moving into the area of thicker foliage, throwing herself down behind another group of trees that provided a better angle of attack. She rolled over onto her stomach and aimed out towards the rocks just in time to see two flashes of the gunman's pistol as it rose over the rock to return fire. She aimed her rifle in that direction but could see nothing but the man's hand extending upward. That one glance only lasted a second or two before the hand dropped back down. She did not fire.

              Jack held his fire for a few moments, waiting to see what would happen next. When the man behind the rock had returned fire he, Jack, had aimed for the arm that had poked up but he was pretty sure he hadn't hit it. He looked downward to where Christine was, searching for a moment and finally finding her. She was looking up towards him, unable to see him but trying to attract his attention. "I got you, sis," he yelled down at her.

              Christine, gratified that she hadn't hidden herself too well, gave him another set of hand signals, indicating that she wanted him to cover another advance. Now she knew why Skip had told them so many times that the key to a successful battle was communication and coordination. Without being able to signal her intentions to Jack, she was pinned down and trapped, with being able to do that, she was nearly invincible.

              "Got it," came Jack's voice, drifting downward at her.

              "Good," she mumbled to herself, gripping her weapon and slowly raising to her knees, preparatory to running. She took another deep breath and gave the go signal. Gunfire once again exploded from Jack's position, pattering down on the rocks. She jumped to her feet and dashed through the open ground to the next set of trees, moving strictly forward this time. She glanced at her enemy's position and still saw nothing but rocks. Jack continued to fire and she dashed forward again, diving behind a fallen log and scrambling as far forward along its length as she could go.

              The gunfire from Jack's rifle halted again and there was no answering fire from the pistol this time. Slowly, cautiously, she raised her head up and peeked over the log, ready to dive back down in an instant if she saw danger. She did not. What she saw instead was a man crouching behind the rocks, his body as close to the edge of them as he could physically get it. He was in profile to her, holding a pistol in both hands, pointing it upward. Even from twenty yards away Christine could see that he was scared shitless and didn't know what to do. He was close to panic, finding himself pinned between two armed people.

              Had she more time and inclination to think the situation through, she might have felt sorry for the man, might have hesitated to shoot at him as he cowered there. But she didn't. She acted as Skip had taught her. She took tactical advantage of the situation. She brought her rifle up and sighted in on him, aiming at the bulk of his body. She fired four times in rapid succession, seeing more goose down fly, seeing blood splatter on the rocks, hearing the startled scream of the gunman even over the sound of the rifle fire. He slumped to the ground, the pistol falling from his hand into the mud. He did not move.

              " Christine?" Jack's voice yelled from back at his position.

              "I got him, Jase!" she yelled back, her breath raggedly moving in and out of her lungs, terrified sweat running down her face with the rainwater. "Move down to where I'm at. I'll cover you from here."

              As she waited for her brother to come down to her she began to tremble with fear overload. Her hands, which had been steady as a rock during the battle, began to shake, making it difficult to keep the barrel of her rifle steady. She closed her eyes for just a second and commanded herself to be calm. This wasn't over yet. There still might be others out there.

              There wasn't. Jack came down and she signaled him to find a position opposite of her. He did so and, after a furious exchange of signals, they moved in, advancing to the rise behind where the gunmen had emerged, searching with their eyes the downhill portion of the forest there. They saw no signs of anyone else, nor did they receive any jigs on their nerve endings.

              "I think those were the only two," Christine said when they finally stood together behind the trees. "If nothing else, we're secure up here."

              "Jesus, sis," Jack said, trembling himself now. "What the hell happened? Where did they come from?"

              "They must've just been two people that were heading for the bridge when they stumbled onto me." She told him the story, her voice breaking a few times as it came out. "It's a good thing I finished my business before he came out," she concluded, feeling the giddiness that she remembered from her last firefight now. "If he would've came before, I'd be cleaning it out of my panties about now."

              The thundering roar of water rushing through the canyon had masked all sounds of the battle from Skip, Paul, and Jessica, who were standing just in front of the SUVs on the Garden Hill side of the bridge. All they knew was that it was first light, the agreed upon time for the two kids to show themselves, and they hadn't done so yet. Skip, starting to become seriously worried now, kept waving his hands every few minutes towards the hill, giving them the pre-arranged signal. They were supposed to stand briefly and acknowledge the wave and then move down the hill towards the road.

              "I'll give them ten more minutes," he said to Paul, "and then I'm going over there to look for them. Something's wrong."

              "Hmmph," Jessica said from around a large wad of gum she was chewing. "It wouldn't surprise me if something happened to them. I still can't believe you left a couple of children out there alone all night. And with guns. That's criminal behavior if you ask me."

              Skip glared at her, giving her such a seething look that she took a step away from him, her mouth stopping in mid-chew. "They're not children," he said to her. "They're more capable out there than anyone I've seen in this town so far."

              She said nothing, just glared back at him.

              "Maybe they're having trouble getting up the hill," Paul suggested, trying, unsuccessfully, to break the tension a little. "You said they have full packs to lug, not to mention your pack and your weapon as well."

              "It shouldn't have taken this long," Skip said, reaching his hand beneath the black rain slicker he had been provided and itching at his chest. He had discovered that his body was so used to wearing wet clothing that it did not know what to think of dry clothing. The material of the shirt, jeans, and underwear he had been given felt rough to his skin, almost like sandpaper. A strange irony.

              The minutes ticked by slowly, agonizingly, and finally, just before Skip was about to begin heading for the far side on his own, he spotted movement atop the hill. "There," he said, pointing, his voice full of relief. "Do you see it?"

              All three of them peered intently upward until they saw two people, so dirty that they would not have been visible had they not been silhouetting themselves deliberately. They both waved their hands back and forth for a moment. Skip waved frantically back, giving them a "come down" gesture. They stopped waving and began to scramble downward, towards the road.

              "They're not going to fall, are they?" Jessica asked. "Shouldn't they go around the hill to the other side?"

              "They're a lot safer coming down that way," Skip said, keeping his eyes on their progress. "God only knows how many lowlifes you have camped out in the forest over there."

              "But if they fall..." she started.

              "You weren't very concerned about them last night," Skip said. "You were perfectly willing to leave them out there to the wolves. Why are you so worried about them now?"

              "I did not say I was unconcerned for them last night," she barked at him. "I just told you that we couldn't afford to feed outsiders. I still feel that way. I'm just shocked that you allow children to carry guns and camp out in the woods by themselves. And that you encourage them to climb over wet hills where they could fall and hurt themselves."

              Skip opened his mouth to retort, and God knows what might have come out of it, but Paul, keeping with his role as mediator, stepped in between them. "That's enough, you two," he said, holding up his hands in a gesture of supplication. "Really. It looks like the two of them are coming down just fine. There's no need for anyone to worry."

              Skip let his mouth close. Jessica, after a moment's consideration, did the same. Silence ruled during the rest of the descent.

              As soon as Christine and Jack put their feet on the roadway and started walking towards the bridge, Skip began trotting towards them. By the time they reached the first set of barricade vehicles that guarded the entrance, he was running and so were they, Skip's backpack held between them. Jessica and Paul stayed back, neither willing to venture any further out of town then they already were (this was, in fact, Jessica's first trip to the bridge since the impact itself).

              "Skip!" Christine yelled, dropping her half of his backpack to the pavement and rushing into his arms. She hit him nearly hard enough to knock him over, her clothing leaving a dirty smear of mud on his rain slicker. He didn't care. He put his arms around her and hugged her tightly to him, kissing her muddy face.

              Jack came up right behind her - after carefully setting the pack and Skip's rifle down - and joined the embrace, not caring if people thought he was a fag for hugging a guy. He could not remember ever being so glad to see someone in his life. Skip let one arm come off of Christine and put it around his shoulders.

              "You're safe," Christine said, her voice choked. "You made it in!"

              "Fuckin aye I did," he said, continuing to hug both of them.

              "Are they gonna let us stay here?" Jack asked, fighting back tears of his own.

              "We're working on it," he told them. "We'll know by the end of the day, but it's looking good."

              "Did you shake 'em up like you said you would?" Jack asked.

              "Even more," he said, pulling back from the embrace. "Even more."

              "My God," Christine said, looking at him closely for the first time. "You don't even look like you. You're clean!"

              "And you shaved," Jack put in. "I never saw you without the beard before."

              "You like it?" he asked, running his wet hand over his reddened, itchy face. "This is what I used to look like before."

              "It's different," Christine said, reaching out to touch the bare skin.

              "What took you guys so long?" he asked.

              Their expressions darkened. "We ran into some trouble this morning," Christine said.

              "What?"

              They explained what had happened, Christine doing most of the narration but Jack throwing in a few comments from time to time. As they talked, the happiness they had shown at seeing him again turned to fear and despair at what they had been through.

              "When I got over along that log," she said, trembling a little at the memory, "I saw him just sitting there, cowering. He still had the gun in his hand but he looked so scared, Skip. He looked terrified! I shot him anyway, four or five times, until he fell down."

              "That's exactly what you should have done, Christine," Skip told her, sensing that she was feeling guilty for killing someone who hadn't actually been shooting at her at that moment. "You did everything just right. Perfectly. Both of you did."

              "But what if I would've just told him to leave?" she asked. "I mean, he looked like he just wanted to get away from there. I could've yelled over to him..."

              "You gave him that chance once, didn't you?" Skip asked, lifting her chin to make her look him in the eyes. Tears were running down her face, mixing with the rainwater. "He didn't take you up on it, and in fact, he fired at you again after you'd made the offer, didn't he?"

              "Yes, but..."

              "No buts," Skip said firmly. "You have nothing to feel guilty about. That man took his chances and he lost. I would've been pissed off at you if you'd done anything but smoke his ass once you got him in your sights."

              "Yeah, sis," Jack replied. "You smoked his ass! Fuck him."

              "It sounds like you two performed a picture-perfect flanking maneuver. It's like I've told you all along, you're bad-ass."

              "I suppose," Christine said, still sniffing a little, still unable to get the final moments out of her head.