"Shut up!" said both men on the dock. "What are you trying to do, let everyone in Boston know where we are?” demanded the older one.
"I have to get out of here, my family’s in South Carolina,” Reese begged, “I’ve been trying to make it home since we left Maine. Jo's with me, she's from Texas.“
“Enough with the personal story,” interrupted the gray-haired man. “I don't care who you are, where you come from, or where you're going! We’re here to find supplies, not take on passengers!"
"Over there!" said the woman. She spun suddenly and leveled her shotgun on the other side of the dock.
"Don't shoot!" Reese shouted. "Jo, drop your gun!"
"Keep them covered," said the leader. The older man raised his shotgun and aimed it at Reese but continued to look over his shoulder at the action on the other side of the dock. The leader turned and jumped off the dock and disappeared out of Reese's site. "Don't move! I'm warning you…”
“Uncle Byron!” the young man yelled.
A gunshot cracked, and two shotguns thundered in response. The sound echoed up and down the shoreline and caused hundreds of birds to scatter from the wreckage along the coast. Reese flinched and staggered back. Someone wailed in pain on the other side of the dock.
No!" he screamed. "Don't shoot her! Jo!”
“Tony! Tony, what's going on?” the woman with the gun trained on Reese yelled over her shoulder. She glanced back and though Reese had the opportunity to bolt forward while she was preoccupied, he remained frozen in place. While a brief but violent gunfight erupted on the other side of the dock Reese spotted movement up at street level.
Two men pointed toward the sailboats and the people on the dock. He narrowed his eyes and strained to see details. Reese wasn't sure if they were from the convention center or not, but the way they reacted in such an animated fashion made him think they were part of Mayo’s group. Before he could raise the alarm with the woman up on the dock, one of the figures in the distance turned and ran away. The other remained where he was and watched.
"What's going on?" Reese demanded, his eyes still locked on the strange figure in the distance.
"I don't know!" the woman snapped.
Someone screamed, another gunshot went off, then an unearthly quiet settled along the waterfront once more.
"Please, please tell me my friend isn't dead!" Reese begged, his vision blurry.
"Unless your lady friend was a middle-aged black man, I don't think you have anything to worry about," the woman on the dock replied evenly. “It’s my husband I’m worried about.”
"Jo!" Reese called again.
The younger man from the sailboat climbed back up on the dock next to the woman. Blood streamed from a cut on his face, and he was soaking wet from the chest down. He turned around and reached down to help pull the older man up to the dock.
“Oh, look what they’ve done to you,” the woman cried. She dropped her weapon and knelt next to her husband, who collapsed to the dock and disappeared from Reese’s view. The split second he saw the man was enough for Reese to realize he’d been gravely injured. Blood soaked his shirt and ran down his face and neck. The man had taken a nasty wound to his head.
Then Jo climbed up on the dock and Reese all but choked in surprise.
She adjusted the campaign hat on her head, shook hands with the woman, then waved at Reese. "What’re you still doing down there?" she called. "Get up here and help me tend to this man."
Reese blinked. "What...?”
"I left my bag down there—get it, and climb up here, quick!" Jo said, in full-on medic mode.
Reese, unable to process everything at the moment, snatched his pistol from the rocks, tucked it behind his waistband, and scrambled underneath the pier’s pillars. He emerged on the other side of the dock to find Jo's red first aid pack on the ground on the shore by the waterline. He slung the wet pack over his good shoulder and did his best to climb one-handed up the rickety boards nailed to the side of the dock support post. Grateful for assistance, he grasped the younger man's hand and felt himself lifted to the dock surface.
"I don't understand," Reese said as he handed over the pack. Jo snatched it and turned, intent on Byron, who left a pool of blood on the dock.
"I don't understand it myself," the younger man from the sailboat said. He stuck out a trembling hand. "I'm Tony. Tony Andrews.”
"Reese Lavelle," Reese replied.
"That's my aunt, Libby. And my uncle," Tony said with a nod at the unconscious man on the ground. “Byron.”
"Nice to meet you," Libby said as she slung her shotgun over one shoulder. "How bad is it?" she asked Jo.
"Hard to say. Looks like the bullet went clean through him—I can stop the bleeding, but when he fell off the dock, he hit his head pretty good. I don't know what to do for that…” She looked up, her hand stained red with Byron’s blood, and applied a fresh bandage from her pack.
"That's not the only problem we have," Reese said. He pointed up the hill toward the surface streets. "That guy up there at the corner."
“Where’d he come from?" Tony asked Jo. He took a pair of field binoculars from a pouch on his cargo shorts and brought them to his eyes. "Guy’s got a gun," he warned. "Just a pistol, but he’s watching us. Crap.”
"What is it?" asked Reese as he drew his own weapon.
"He's got a radio,” Tony said as he stared through the binoculars.
