She didn’t try to avoid the little thornbushes or the jagged rocks. She crawled on her hands, elbows, knees, feet as fast as she could. Sand, rock, stone, red dirt, thorns…gunfire near her. Sporadic at first but then more concentrated. A dozen or more men and women shooting into the bush to the south of the house. Shotguns and rifles and then, cutting through the other sounds, the disheartening, terrifying chug-chug-chug of an AK-47.
She flattened her body in the dirt.
The AK tore up the field twenty-five feet to her left, the shells hammering into an old cast-iron water tank, ricocheting off in all directions. A ricochet could kill her just as easily as a straight shot.
“Do it, Ma!” someone yelled behind her.
“Get going!” Ma said.
Going where?
A shotgun blast screamed through the air.
Heather stole a look behind her. She could see Ma in the cab of the Toyota Hilux, which was driving in roughly her direction. She was leaning out the window with a weapon. Ma erupted in light as she fired a shotgun.
Heather flattened herself as the white-hot buckshot scraped the air above her head.
I thought that old bitch couldn’t walk!
Heather had no choice now. She got up and ran toward the darkness of the mesa. The Toyota’s headlights found her. Ma reloaded the shotgun. Heather hit the deck as Ma fired. The shotgun pellets were so close this time, she could hear them whinnnn above her.
She got up on one knee and aimed the Lee-Enfield at the Hilux driver. Matt. He saw her aim at him. He desperately turned the wheel. She squeezed the trigger and nothing happened. She ejected the spent cartridge. She rummaged in the bag, found a .303 round, loaded it, aimed, pulled the trigger.
A bullet punched through the windshield. She heard a screech of brakes, and this time the Toyota did not follow.
Either she’d killed Matt or he’d thought better about pursuit.
She ran and ran and ran.
Motorcycles came out looking for her, one going south, another east. The ATV came out and even the drone.
When she was nearly a thousand yards away, she stopped and caught her breath and drank water from the canteen.
Suddenly all the farm lights went out.
The generator had been bled dry of diesel.
She checked the ammo situation. She had three bullets left in the bag.
Was it worth risking a thousand-yard shot? Was it worth wasting one of her final three rounds in an attempt to ignite diesel and gasoline fumes?
Why not?
She lay down in the dirt and flipped the long-range sight and aimed slightly above the black mass that was the fuel tank for the generator.
The music in her head was “Day of the Lords” by Joy Division.
Careful, now.
Slow.
She pulled the trigger.
The .303 slug went straight through the diesel tank without igniting anything.
Damn it.
Worth another?
Hell with it. She danced the bolt. Aimed. She squeezed the trigger, and the rifle thumped comfortingly into her right shoulder. The explosive in the cartridge threw out a lead ogive that the barrel spiraled into the air with the faintest rush of smoke and the sweet smell of gunpowder. The bullet had been on a collision course with its target since it was manufactured in North London in 1941. It traveled across the heath at two thousand feet per second.
There was a yellow explosion that was so big, it might possibly draw attention on the mainland. She heard the roar a full two seconds after she saw the flame.
“That’s for Tom. He was a doctor! And it’s for Hans and Petra. And it’s for scaring the shit out of my kids!” she said and stood and raised her middle finger.
40
She jogged for a half a mile before stopping and taking a sip from her canteen.
The rain intensified. Sheet lightning silhouetting her against the horizon. It smelled like Seattle rain. Like fir. It didn’t smell like this parched continent. She wondered if all rain smelled the same.
Poor dead Tom would have known.
It took her forty-five minutes to make it back to the cave.
The O’Neills could get more dogs, but for now the dogs were dead and the three of them were safe.
Owen was sitting by the fire waiting for her.
“Hey, Owen,” she said.
“Hey,” he said. “You’re wet.”
“It’s raining. I couldn’t get any more meat. Everything OK here?”
“Yeah…I killed a snake.”
“You what?”
“Over there, against the wall. I didn’t know if it was going to bother us or not but it was crawling toward Olivia, so I had to kill it.”
Heather was aghast. “What? A snake? Are you joking?”