“What the fuck?”
Sparky was lying next to him, his face a bloody dried mess. Fred shook him. “Get up! Get up, Fartel! Those bastards took my uniform.”
The sergeant groaned, rolled onto his side and retched. “Brayburne,” he finally gasped. “He’s gone back into town. We have to warn the others.”
***
“I gotta give that farm boy credit,” Caitlan said as she drove her car off of Highway 83 and onto the dirt approach leading into the gravel pit. “He knows these roads like the back of his hand.”
Nicholas spoke up from the backseat. “Is this where one of the bombs dropped?”
Angela laughed. “No, it isn’t, but I can see why you might think so.”
The Audi descended down a steep trail of dried mud built into a side wall of the quarry. The headlights cast long shadows against the wide ruts where bigger vehicles had travelled in the not so distant past. Rain had carved them out deeper. Caitlan leaned forward in the driver’s seat and tried to peer past the car’s hood at the road immediately ahead. She winced as the steel wheels scraped against hardened dirt. “I take back what I said... that damn hick is going to wreck my car. What does he know?”
The trail eventually got better as the grade levelled out. Caitlan drove the Audi out onto the flat, wide bottom of the excavated area. She turned slowly around in one wide circle to get a better look of where it was Hayden had sent them to wait. The pit resembled a massive crater, three hundred yards across and a hundred feet deep. Giant piles of road-worthy gravel were gathered haphazardly all around them with just enough roadway between most for larger working machines to manoeuvre around. They looked like dark grey pyramids in the gathering gloom.
Michael pounded the back of Angela’s seat. “Can we get out and climb to the top of one of those?”
Caitlan parked the car. “God only knows how long we’ll be waiting for Hayden to show up.” She gave Angela a look that said if he shows up. “What could it hurt? Let the kids burn off some steam.”
They all climbed out and the three children ran for the nearest pile. Angela called after them. “Slow down, and be careful! Don’t go all the way to the top!”
“Let them be. Didn’t you ever climb up a big pile of dirt and play King of the Castle as a kid?” Caitlan opened the trunk and started sifting through the things she’d collected there.
“As a matter of fact, no... I didn’t.”
“Oh, I see. You were a good girl. All prim and proper.”
Ha! If only she knew the truth. I wish I could set her straight on some facts.
Caitlan stopped what she was doing when Angela didn’t reply. “There you go again, staring off into nothingness. Are you alright?”
Angela nodded. “I’m fine. I was just thinking about the past.”
“That’s about all any of us have to do these days... Aaah! There you are.” She closed the trunk and opened a pack of cigarettes. “Gave this up months ago, but I didn’t have the guts to throw out these last few.” She removed a tiny disposable lighter from one side of the package and lit up. She exhaled a cloud of blue smoke and leaned against her car. “Whoa. That first drag after so long hits you like a ton of bricks.”
“So you’re going to start smoking again?”
“Why not? I’m sure there’s still plenty of cartons left to smoke, and I’m sure as hell not worried about my health anymore.”
“Well you shouldn’t let the kids catch you doing it.”
The women watched the children scramble up the gravel. They would only get so far along the forty-five degree angle, and they would slide back down. Michael made it all the way to the top on his third attempt. He set a small wave of the loose stones free with his shoe, and watched as it met his sister. Amanda plopped onto her butt and rode the wave back down to the bottom. Nicholas was contentedly sitting ten feet from the ground, tossing pebbles into the air and laughing at the other two.
Caitlan crushed the half-smoked cigarette into the dirt. “It’s getting cold. Let’s build a small fire before it’s too dark.”
There was dead brush and brown grass hanging out from the soil along some of the pit wall. They gathered a few armloads and deposited it into a pile not far from the car. The grass was dry, and the small branches lit quickly. The children left their loose-stone pyramid and joined the women seated around the fire.
“Now I really want a hotdog,” Nicholas said.
Amanda moaned. “And marshmallows. It isn’t a real camp fire unless you have marshmallows to roast.”
Caitlan smiled at Angela, and Angela smiled back. The world had turned dark and ugly, and moments like this—moments when children could laugh, and play, and imagine—had become a rare thing.
The moment was about to end.
Chapter 11
Hayden had taken the car off the highway two miles from town and driven through a field to the west end. He waited until most of the color had vanished from the sky, and then set off into Brayburne on foot. There were half a dozen controlled fires along the perimeter that he could see. He headed for the largest—the one directly behind the closest green tent.
Last tent on the west end of Main
