Reese snorted. “Well, they are. Any country boy back home could hit a tree rat from here with one of them guns, six ways from Sunday. No sense making anyone nervous.”
Jo glared at Reese for a moment, then squinted downrange at the nascent roadblock. “Could be.” She put her hands on her hips and stretched her back with an audible pop. “So…how long you wanna stand here like fools?”
Reese waited a moment. The activity down the road ground to a halt and one person waved their arms. Before long, everyone ran for cover and three figures stepped out in the middle of the road, where they waited. “I reckon they’ve seen us now,” Reese announced. “Come on.”
Jo walked in silence next to him the last quarter mile or so to the collection of men with rifles in the road. As they grew closer to town, the sound of birds in the trees faded to the point that the only noise Reese noticed was the rhythmic crunch-thump of their own boots hitting the asphalt, step after step.
When they were perhaps fifty yards away from the handful of cars, pallets—and one wheelbarrow—haphazardly spread across the road, the man in the middle of the group of locals raised a hand and shouted. “That’s far enough.”
Reese and Jo came to a stop. “No sudden moves,” he muttered under his breath. “And for cryin’ out loud, keep your hands away from that boomstick on your back. These guys are packing some serious hardware.”
Jo swallowed. “Ain’t gotta tell me twice. Last time I seen a belt-fed machine gun like that was at my crazy uncle’s place when I was a little girl.”
Reese turned his head and looked at her. “Your uncle had a machine gun?”
She grinned. “Crazy, remember?”
“Well? What’re you folks up to?” shouted the man who’d told them to stop.
“Showtime,” Reese muttered. He raised his voice to holler back. “About a foot of mud.”
When no one responded except the buzzing insects in the scraggly bushes along the road, Reese cleared his throat. “We’re just passing through—came from Ellsworth a few days back, and Mount Desert Island before that.”
The three men in the road put their heads together for a moment, but Reese paid more attention to the man with the machine gun who leaned over a car hood in the background. It’d been mounted on a tripod and plopped square on the hood of a little sedan. A smaller man stood next to the gunner who tended the loop of shiny rounds in a sinuous strand connected to the gun. No one said a word, and Reese got the distinct feeling that there were quite a few more eyes that watched them from the barricade.
“We don’t want any trouble,” Reese said, in an attempt to reassure the locals. “If there was a way around, we’d take it. We’re trying to get home—“
“Where’s that? You don’t sound like you’re from Downeast, that’s for sure.”
“South Carolina. Charleston,” he yelled back. “My friend here’s a park ranger from Mount Desert Island. She’s headed for Texas.”
“No, I’m not,” Jo hissed as she kept a smile plastered on her face.
“Everyone can tell you’re from Texas the moment you open your mouth,” Reese replied, just as quietly. “Just follow my lead.”
“Alright, you can come on in a little closer, but keep your hands off those guns, if you please.”
Reese nodded. “Come on,” he said to Jo.
As they approached the roadblock, Reese was grateful to see the men in the road did not once raise their own weapons. But that confidence said a lot. They did have other people who watched them approach, and most were armed.
He was about to greet—and thank—the leader as they stopped, when Jo spoke up. “That thing real?” she asked in her Texan twang.
The machine gunner, an older man with aviator style sunglasses and a ‘Desert Storm Veteran’ hat, grinned. His teeth flashed in a thick gray beard. “Ahyup.”
“M240 Bravo?” Jo pressed with a smile.
The man leaned away from the gun and rested his arm across the top. He shared a look with the younger man who held the ammo belt. “You know your way around crew served weaponry.”
Jo brushed aside the compliment. “My uncle had one when I was little.”
The gunner grinned. “Some uncle.”
“Well, we lived in Texas…”
“Ah,” the man said as he widened his smile. “You folks do it right down there.”
“Preach it, brother,” Jo replied with a tip of her campaign hat.
The leader turned to glare at the gunner at the same time Reese turned to Jo. After several people cleared their throats and shifted stances, the leader spread his hands. “Sorry about the uh…unconventional welcome. But these are turbulent times we’re in.”
“I’ll say,” Reese replied casually. “Don’t worry about it. This is a much better welcome than we received in Ellsworth.”
“How are they?” a voice called from the right side of the road. A young man stood up from behind one of the cars.
“Heard there was some fighting up there—that true?” asked the machine gunner.
“I’ll say,” Jo gushed, “my friend here took a knife to the back trying to protect the chief of police when the riot started.”
“Riot?” more than one voice asked. In seconds, the street became crowded with locals. Most slung their rifles over shoulders and gathered to hear the news.
“Is this any way to run a roadblock?” the leader demanded in exasperation. He turned away from the suddenly mollified group and faced Reese again. “Apologies…this is our first time.”
Reese laughed. “We stopped, didn’t we?”
The leader stared at him a moment, then cracked a smile. “Ahyup, I suppose you did, at that.” He stepped forward and extended a hand. “Name’s Ron Chapman. I’m the mayor here in Belfast. Welcome to town—such as it is.”
Reese shook hands with
