swung my carbine up to cover the trail. “Ken should be along at any time,” I gasped. “Don’t shoot him.”
She didn’t waste her breath on an answer, just nodded. Sure enough, ten seconds later, Ken came trotting through the trees. He slipped quickly and silently through the trees and, as I watched him, I realized my newfound friend had some hidden facets. If I hadn’t known approximately where to watch, I probably would have missed him altogether. I whistled lightly to get his attention as he crossed the trail, and he veered over to squat next to us.
“Good to see you back with the good guys.” Ken reached out and gingerly touched her swollen cheek. “Looks like they popped you pretty good, though.”
She winced a little at his touch. “It’s all right,” she said. “He won’t pop anyone ever again.”
Ken nodded and turned to me. “Okay, now what?”
“You still think we can get all of them?” I was honestly beginning to doubt it.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But we can’t lead them back home.”
I worried about the same thing. We couldn’t lead them home. We couldn’t take them head on. Our only chance was to ambush them, and finding a way to do that now would be tough. They would be watching for us.
Megan complicated the situation with an observation. “What about Mrs. Robertson? We still have to get her out of there.”
Ken and I glanced at one another. In the heat of the battle, we had both forgotten Pat Robertson, still tied to a table in her backyard. “Let’s get them out here,” I said.
Ken shook his head. “We can’t take them on like this. There are at least eight of them left, and they’re all looking for us right now.”
“All I said was to get them out here.” I grinned. “I didn’t say we were going to wait on them. We fire a few shots to get their attention, get them moving down the trail, then circle back the way we came. Back to the house. You know the trails; they don’t.”
He thought for a moment. “Well, let’s get them out here.”
I smiled wearily. “Is there an echo around here?” I raised the carbine. “Everyone ready?”
When they nodded, I fired four or five shots into the air. Less than a minute later, we heard the sounds of a pack of inept woodsmen crackling through the brush. As soon as I saw movement, I tossed out two more of the smoke bombs and fired. I was out of effective range, but I wanted them to know exactly where we were before we were within range of their weapons. Some of them returned fire; others dove for cover. Within moments, smoke obscured everything. We turned and ran down the trail making enough noise for a blind man to follow. I stopped once to fire back into the smoke, and yelled, “Back to the house! Back to the house! Hurry!” We all turned abruptly to the right, ran about fifty yards, and dropped into the thickest briar patch we could find.
The smoke bombs burned for two more minutes before the cloud slowly began fading. It was difficult to see through the brush of our hiding place but, after a minute or two, we could hear the marauders cautiously moving past. For a second, I entertained the wild idea that it would be the perfect time to impetuously spring to our feet spewing bullets in all directions in a glorious attempt to take out the last of them at a single stroke. Unfortunately, I could tell from the sounds of their passage that they were much too spread out. They were all around us, whispering orders designed to “herd them back to their house.”
We would never be able to get them all. Though the wait was maddening, I sat silently in the briars with Megan and Ken, ignoring the multitude of scratches, bruises, and abrasions our nasty little game of hide and seek produced.
A few minutes later, when we were finally sure that they were past us, we raced back to the Robertson’s home. Ken reached the house first and rushed straight for the back porch.
“Damn! Damn them all!”
I rounded the corner of the house to find Ken kneeling next to the table to which Pat Robertson was tied. As I neared, I could see the bruised and bloody condition she was in. He looked up as Megan and I came toward him. “She’s dead.” Anguish lined his features as he spoke. Pain for the woman and her husband… for his neighbors, his friends. “The filthy animals beat her to death,” he sobbed.
I hesitated a moment, then walked over and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Ken? Ken, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, man. But we have to go.”
He was unresponsive, his grief overwhelming.
“Ken! I understand, but the others are still on that trail. We don’t have time for this.”
“What the hell do you mean, no time?” He slung my hand violently from his shoulder and stood. “Pat’s dead. John’s dead. We didn’t save anyone. All this,” his arm swept out to indicate the bodies littering the area, “was for nothing!” He stepped over to the nearest of the bodies and kicked it. I heard the distinct cracking sound of breaking ribs. He kicked it again and again, caving in an entire side of the corpse. The whole time we could hear him sobbing and saying, “All for nothing!”
The violence of Ken’s reaction startled me. I really didn’t know what to say to get through to him. I was about to try to reason with him when Megan stepped in.
“Where did the rest of them go, Ken?” She asked it quietly, simply, and somehow it got through to him. He stopped the destruction of the corpse and turned to face her, uncertainty on his face.
“Isn’t that trail they’re on the same trail we took from the house?” she prodded. “Where will they end up if they follow it all the way out? Back at the house, right? Back to your wife and my mom and brother.”
The change was immediate. He wiped his eyes. “Okay.” He sniffed, and I could see the difference in his eyes. He was back with us. For now. “Yeah, let’s finish this. How long ago did they pass us on the trail?”
“Nearly five minutes,” I estimated.
“Do you think we can catch them in time?” Megan asked. Five minutes on those trails could translate to more than a mile, and the distance grew as we spoke.
“We can do better than that.” I jerked my thumb at their truck. “If we can find the keys.”
When the interior of the truck failed to yield anything but broken glass, the windshield having been one of the casualties of the fire fight, we had no choice but to search the bodies, something none of us were thrilled about. Feeling sympathy for Megan, I gave her a choice. She could go and retrieve the crossbow and rifle she had lost earlier, along with as many other weapons as she could find lying around, or she could help search the bodies. She took one look at the men in the back of the truck and left to find her weapons.
Meanwhile, Ken and I readied ourselves for the grisly work ahead. “Which one do you want?” he asked.
I noticed that one of the four in the truck bed had a sunburn on his left arm, as if he’d had that arm exposed to the intense sunlight. The right arm was fine. “This one.” I was pretty sure I had found the driver.
Sure enough, his right pants pocket clinked when I patted it. Digging the keys out still proved to be a nasty business, though. The man had evidently been drinking for quite some time before Ken shot him, if the amount of urine staining his pants was any indication. We got the keys, and I started to drag the bodies out of the truck.
“Leave ‘em in the truck.” Ken’s voice was gruff. “I have an idea.”
I gave him a quizzical look but, after his earlier outburst, I wasn’t about to argue. Together, we rolled the bodies further into the bed of the truck and closed the tailgate. Megan returned with several rifles slung over her shoulders and, within minutes, we were flying down the road at eighty miles an hour.
I had never been a conservative driver, but the way Ken slid and whipped around blind turns scared the hell out of me. “Think we’ll make it?” I shouted to be heard above the combined roars of the engine and the wind screaming through the broken windshield.
Ken nodded. “No problem!”
“Think we’ll make it in one piece?”
He grinned maliciously and eased the speed all the way down to seventy-five. “Better?”
Before I could reply, he slowed abruptly and swerved right at a mailbox marked “Kindley.” The sudden turn slammed Megan into me and me into Ken. I was just getting ready to shout a commentary on his driving skills when he slammed on the brake, throwing us into the dash. The entire trip had lasted less than four minutes.
“End of the line, folks. Megan hurry and open the garage door. We don’t want them to recognize the truck.”
She jumped out and hastened to comply. I scrambled out after her and ran to the front door, which was of course, unlocked. As Ken pulled the truck into the garage, I rushed to the fireplace and opened the flue. Our hastily
