reaction was better than the stupor she’d been in since I took her out of the Petry’s house. “They got Andrew.”
“Oh, God…” She put her arms around her daughter.
“Zachary,” I jerked his attention away from the blood on his sister. “Go get Megan another shirt from her closet.” He ran.
I turned back to Debra. “It all happened right in front of her.” I studied Megan’s face as I spoke, hoping to see some reaction, but she just stared at the floor.
“Where’s Amber?” I wanted her to have a look at Megan to make sure there wasn’t anything wrong with her beyond the emotional shock of losing her fiance.
“I think she’s still at the hospital.” Her voice quavered a bit as she continued, “I haven’t heard from her since she left this morning, anyway.”
It made sense. Amber wouldn’t leave with people still under her care.
Zach returned with one of his sister’s shirts and handed it to Debra.
“Is Ken back yet?” I asked.
Cindy had come over by then, and she answered, “He’s out at the number three stash.”
That was about a half-mile into the woods to the south of the house. “Okay, I’ve got to talk to him and find out where we stand. If anything happens while I’m out-” I stopped, realizing that I had no idea what to do if we were attacked here and now. “I guess we play that one by ear,” I finished lamely, and ducked out the door to find Ken and Jim.
It was a fight to shove my way through the massive crowd in the back yard. People milling, moaning, sitting, standing, staring… but nowhere did I see anyone who appeared to know what they were doing. Most had a bewildered look in their eyes. It was a look I could relate to, for though all of us had become accustomed to the idea that violence was more prevalent now than it had ever been before D-day, only Ken and a few other veterans had ever seen the kind of destruction we had just witnessed.
Rejas was at war. Only now could I really begin to understand what that meant.
I found Ken and Jim, as well as most of the other committee heads, coming back toward the house through the woods. Ken squeezed my shoulder and smiled wearily. “Good to see you made it.”
I simply nodded. Maybe I was still a little shocked at everything I had seen, but I just didn’t know what to say.
“I’ll second that.” Jim clapped me on the back hard enough to stagger me for a second. “I still need to pick your brain about this
Turning to walk back with them, I rubbed my aching neck. My mind struggled for a moment, trying to come up with something to say. “Did you get all the supplies passed out?”
“Yeah. It took less than twenty minutes to empty all three caches.”
I blinked. “But there were hundreds of guns. There was food, and tools, and…”
“I know,” Ken interrupted, “but have you looked at how many people there are out there?”
We stopped as we re-entered the clearing at the back of the house.
“Take a look for a minute,” Jim advised, waiting beside Ken as I scanned the area. Amber’s was a huge backyard by the standards that I had been used to in the Houston suburbs. Nearly three acres of cleared land. I tried counting the number of people in an area roughly equivalent to a tenth of the yard-just over two hundred. Multiplied by ten, that gave us more than two thousand people.
“Good Lord! So many people-” I stopped when I saw Jim shaking his head. “What?”
“Rejas had nearly seven thousand people this mornin’.” His words put the crowd in proper perspective. “This ain’t near crowded enough for my likin’.”
Undoubtedly, hundreds, possibly even thousands, were still scattered throughout the woods, unaware of our grouping at the homestead. But as much as I might wish otherwise, I couldn’t believe that more than four thousand of our people were wandering around out there. Our dead must number in the hundreds, at least. The rest had to still be in town, either fighting, or captured if Larry’s army had been instructed to take prisoners.
“Oh, my God.” I turned to Ken. “We’ve got to go back. There are too many still back there.”
The faint sounds of gunfire from the direction of town punctuated my words, but Ken shook his head. “With what? We’ve got a couple of thousand people. Some are wounded; some are kids. Altogether, I’d guess we have about seventeen hundred, at the most. Seventeen hundred civilians with whatever guns and ammunition we could give them. A few had time to bring their own or take weapons off of the soldiers they killed. But still, I estimate that less than half of us have any kind of firearm.”
I looked again and saw that he was right. We had concentrated on hiding most of our weapons and supplies before Larry’s troops got into town. “We’ve still got to do something! Send back small armed groups to help gather more of our people.”
Bowing to his experience as a vet, Jim turned to Ken. “Would that work?”
Ken shrugged. “It’s a gamble. We could just as easily end up losing whoever goes back, and their equipment, and still not get anyone out of town.”
“What if we send out some groups to help get people out, and others to get to some of the stashes where we hid guns and supplies? At least some of them are bound to get through! And we’d be bringing back enough supplies to make it worth the risk.” I was nearly pleading.
Jim turned from me to Ken, and back again. “I don’t know. I don’t like leavin’ folks in town any more than you do, Leeland. But I got a bunch of ‘em here an’ now that I’m responsible for, too.”
Afraid he was going to waffle, I made a stand. “I’m going back. If I have to do it alone, I will, but I’m going back. There are too many people back there.”
The mayor opened his mouth to protest, but stopped when he realized there really wasn’t anything he could do to stop me.
Ken made it worse. “I guess you’ll need someone to show you the back trails again.” He looked at Jim. “I’m going with him.”
Mayor Kelland’s brows tried to reach his hairline. “But I thought you were the one that was against all this!”
“I just said it was a gamble.” He paused as if to gather his thoughts. “I figure our people’s lives are worth the risk.”
Jim blew out a deep breath. “Okay. Ya’ll gather up as many as you think you’ll need. I’m gonna get the rest of these folks deeper into the woods.” He turned back to me. “Nice as this place may be, it’s just too close to town. Sooner or later that bunch’ll find it, an’ I’d rather not be here when they do.”
“Where are you headed?”
He turned to Ken. “You know the old Vogler fertilizer plant?”
“Yeah. That’s a bit of a walk, isn’t it?”
“Yep. But it’s also on the other side of Cypress Creek and the reservoir. I’d like to see ‘em try to get a tank in there if we rig the bridge with some of that dynamite ya’ll had stashed out back.” He grabbed my arm. “I ain’t gonna complain about you not sharin’ that before now, since it all works out in our favor this time around. But you ain’t got nothin’ else like that hidden around here, do ya?”
“Sorry,” I told him, “you got it all this time.”
“Well, it was worth askin’.” He looked disappointed. “Don’t guess it matters that much, I understand that you can do some real nasty things with fertilizer, if you know how to mix the ingredients right.”
I snapped my fingers as an idea formed. “Did Wayne Kelley make it out?”
Ken nodded. “I think so. I’m pretty sure I saw him helping with the wounded.”
The mayor chuckled. “Yeah, I guess a chemistry teacher might come in handy, huh?”
“Especially with some of the recipes I have in my library. Give me a couple of minutes to get the right books, and he ought to be able to mix up enough mayhem to… well, enough to stop a tank!”
“By damn, that’s the best news I heard all night!” Jim headed to the house at a brisk pace. “C’mon, fellas, we got things to do.”
