The fire inside the wood structure was gaining strength as I inched around the corner and along the wall toward the front of the building. Smoke seeped through cracks between the outside wall and the roof.
I called out. "Richard, this is Tom, don't shoot me."
He replied, "Roger, I see you. That's the last cabin, finish it fast. Byron is hit hard and needs help."
At the burning cabin’s front corner, I heard Mitch fire several bursts at the front wall. Smoke roiled out broken windows on either side of the door.
Suddenly, a barrage of loud shots was fired; muzzle flashes pointed toward Mitch's position. Two figures ran from the burning building firing wildly at Mitch and Richard. All three of us returned fire until both men stumbled and slid face down in the mud.
A female's voice yelled, "Don't shoot, I surrender. I have my hands up.” A figure stepped away from the doorway. Eerie light from flames inside outlined the woman; her arms were up but bent at the elbows with her hands down near her neck.
Suspicion gnawed at my guts and sent a warning to my brain. I flipped the selector to full auto as I made the high step up to the porch deck. The move left me slightly off balance before both feet planted firmly on the wood decking. The woman's right hand suddenly flashed overhead toward me. A chrome pistol glistened in the orange glow of flames. My finger pulled the trigger as I leaned left and fell to the cabin's front wall. A line of 9mm. bullets started to the right side of the woman and trailed to the left and up her torso. To my right Mitch had unleashed a barrage, too. She got off one shot of what sounded like a .22 caliber. Instantly I felt a smack to my right leg and knew I'd been shot. She'd planned to die and take me with her. I cursed myself for giving her that chance. Even after all the battles I'd fought in the past fifteen years, it was still difficult to overcome the sense of fair play and honor I'd been taught early in my life and up to the time of the zombies.
The rest of the evening was a blur. Byron was taken to one of the cabins where his mother treated his wound. Carmen had been an Army nurse in field hospitals and had assisted with many operations on battlefield gunshot wounds. She became the surgeon charged with operating on her own son to remove bone fragments from a shattered rib. The final prognosis was iffy. She gave him a sixty/forty chance of a full recovery if the damage didn't become infected.
My wound was much less severe. She extracted the miniscule lead slug, cleaned the damaged area, sewed two sutures, slapped a bandage on my leg and sent me on my way.
A large bonfire was lit in the center area between the cabins to provide light to work by. There was no fear of adjacent buildings catching fire after the deluge we'd endured all evening. Starting the fire with wet wood was a challenge to overcome even with kindling and diesel fuel. Teams reentered each of the remaining five cabins to make sure we'd removed all of the adults. Richard told Paige about two infants in one of the bedrooms of the first cabin he and Byron had entered.
As the night's activities wound down, the ex-prisoners reminded us they'd been preparing supper and most of it should still be edible. Overcooked maybe but still hot and edible for cold and rain soaked people who hadn't eaten since noon.
We spent the remaining hours till dawn inside the cabins, glad to be dry and under roofs. All the ex-prisoners cried and thanked us profusely.
After a hot breakfast at dawn, we pillaged the site and took any useful items and all the livestock. The trailers that had arrived the previous afternoon were filled with miscellaneous items, all of which we could use. There were even two fifty-five gallon drums of diesel fuel that we would mix gasoline with and use as kerosene in lanterns.
In addition to getting our three young women back, we gained the other two female captives, Wanda and Laverne. Their families were slaughtered, and they were happy to join us. The six small children from the enemy camp and five children from our murdered friends’ camp were adopted by our families and were sure to be raised with loving care. We anticipated there would be rough times ahead for the ones who had witnessed their parents being shot. The two oldest children, Oliver, eleven-years-old and, Clarissa, nine, were sullen and uncooperative. I was sure Kira and our children would bring them into our family and reinforce the idea that what happened was a direct result of the vile acts their parents had committed.
The sun had been up four hours the next day as we rode away. The stench of smoke from five burning cabins and a barn followed us but was soon left behind. A mostly cloud-free sky and clean smelling air helped raise my spirits and encouraged me to put last night's carnage behind us. Our actions were warranted and carried out with swift justice.
My leg was sore as I sat on a horse and stretched the area that had been probed, cleaned and sutured. Six of us rode horses on our initial trip. The spoils of the raid brought us three additional wagons filled with miscellaneous goods plus numerous heads of large and small livestock. Five handlers drove the wagon teams and twelve of us rode saddle horses. There was little jubilation over our retaliatory raid, and I knew the entire group was eager to push the violence out of their minds and hurry back home.
Late that afternoon, I drifted
