***
“Th’ hell took you so long!?”
Jason squirmed under the scarf wrapped around his face. It smelled like body odor, stale beer and cigarettes. Between it, the hat and the thick jacket he had taken from one of the men he and Mark had killed, though, he looked like he belonged in the truck. At least at a distance. Or so he hoped.
He shrugged and threw up his hands for a second as he pulled the truck off the main road and into the parking area in front of the community center. The sandbag barricade had yet to be extended all the way around, leaving him more than enough room to slowly maneuver the trailer into an optimal position.
The man who had shouted at him threw up his arms in return and took a few steps back, shaking his head while the other five looked on. In spite of the noise of the truck and the covering over his face, Jason kept his voice low and tried not to move his lips as he spoke.
“Six out front, like you said. No sign of your mom or any of the others. They must be inside right now. You ready?”
In the back of the truck, Mark gulped hard, squiggling around as though the motion could somehow cause the seat to absorb his prone form and render him entirely invisible to the hostiles outside. In his left hand he tightened his grip on the pair of bolt-cutters, the metal warm from being held against his body. In his right hand he felt the rough surface of plastic and metal bonded together into a small, sleek and deadly shape.
“Ready.” He whispered back, not feeling ready at all.
“As soon as you hear the booms, you move. Don’t hesitate for a second, you hear me? All of our lives count on it.”
Mark nodded for his own sake, grunted in affirmation and swallowed hard again. The plan was foolhardy, dangerous and had a high chance of going sideways. If even one part of their hastily constructed plan happened to be altered or encounter some unexpected obstacle then the whole thing could easily collapse around them. With the lives of their friends and family at stake, though, there wasn’t another choice.
“Careful opening the back!” Jason rolled down the driver’s side window and bellowed out as the six men neared the end of the trailer. “Pretty sure some things shifted!”
“Where’s the rest of the boys?” One of the six shouted back.
“In the trailer, keepin’ the valuables from getting broken!”
“Why the… whatever, just park it already.”
Jason rolled his window back up and unlatched his seatbelt as he brought the slow-moving truck to a halt and put it in park. He stared out the side window as the six gathered around the back of the trailer, hoping that they wouldn’t tell him to get out and help.
“Hey!” Jason swung his head around to see a figure stalking out of the front of the community center. It was the same one he had seen at the gas station, then again at the house. The man in the red shirt. “What’s going on out here? Where’s everyone else?”
Jason felt his chest tighten as he rolled down the side window. “In the trailer!”
Nealson cocked his head, a confused expression on his face. “Why’d they get in there?”
“Solar panels and whatnot. We broke one just getting ‘em in and didn’t want to break more.”
“You broke one?!” He turned and began yelling at the six men milling around at the back of the trailer. “Get it open! Now! I want to see what damage these idiots did!”
Time seemed to slow for Jason as he watched the man in the red shirt walk around to the back of the trailer. He saw one of the six men step up to the rear of the trailer, holding his arm out to open the back doors, and smiled as he rolled up the side window.
Chapter 17
Ellisville, VA
Forty-eight. That was the number of metal tubes, mechanisms and shotgun shells that Jason and Mark were able to rig during the three hours they spent at the house. The tubes were mounted with zip ties to a metal shelf that they had managed to force into the back of the trailer and were arranged in an even pattern to ensure for maximum lethality and dispersal. The tubes in the very center of the shelf were angled straight while those near the edges were angled to the sides by a few degrees. Jason had hoped that the setup would lead to at least a couple of injuries or deaths if a few of the shells fired without a hitch, but never imagined what might happen if all of the tubes successfully fired on a large group.
The back of the trailer amplified the sound of the four dozen shotgun shells, making them sound more like a cannon. The timer that was tripped when the back doors were opened was too short resulting in several of the shots hitting one of the trailer doors, but that did nothing to curb the lethality of the contraption. In an instant the scene at the back of the trailer went from quiet annoyance to complete carnage.
Three of the group fell to the ground, dead before they hit the dirt thanks to slugs tearing through their hearts and heads. The other three screamed in pain, one losing a leg to a nasty grouping of slugs as the metal tubes bucked loose from the shelf and another losing both eyes to a spray of buckshot.
As soon as the shots went off, Mark and Jason both dove out of the truck, though they went in opposite directions. Mark headed straight for the community center, cutting through a couple of other vehicles parked out front. Jason ran around the back of the truck, rifle in hand as he raced for the back of the trailer. It took him less than a second to see that the six men behind the trailer had been incapacitated or killed and he looked up from their bodies to see the man in the red shirt standing unscathed.
Jason raised his rifle and fired, but Nealson was faster. He dove for a space in between a nearby two-door sedan and another small box trailer, Jason’s shots just barely missing him. He crawled through the dirt for a few feet before picking himself up and dashing around to the back of the sedan where he drew his revolver as he tried to catch his breath and figure out what had just happened.
As Nealson was crawling through the dirt, the door to the community center was thrown open by Mark, who was still carrying a pair of bolt-cutters in one hand and a pistol in the other. “Get in, take down the hostile and then free everyone” had been the instructions given to him by Jason. At the time, when they were coming up with the outlandish plan, it had sounded so simple. Get in, kill anyone who was trying to hurt his family, then free his family.
Mark glanced around the room, struggling to make sense of the place. Stacks of crates and boxes were scattered around, illumination came from both generator-powered sources and from what looked like propane lanterns, making the whole place a mishmash of dark shadows and painfully bright lights. Two voices cried out one after the other as Mark walked through the door.