Last Light Falling (22 page)

“Where did you get these clothes?” Gabe asks.

“Off a dead officer, of course. Any other brilliant questions?” It’s like I’m dealing with a child here.

“Did you see them put anyone on buses?” I ask, irritated by his smart-ass response.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe you’d like a Twinkie shoved up your ass.” I aim my gun at his crotch.

“Okay, okay, easy. No reason to defile a perfectly good snack. When the officers came, I was in the library on the fourth floor. That’s where I like to do my occupational reading, if you know what I mean,” he says with a wink.

I grow disgusted hearing about his particular habits, as I can only assume he is referring to his daily bowel movement.

“I heard them talking about the buses while I was hiding underneath a desk. They were combing the floors, searching for every last person, and that’s when I heard a gunshot fired outside in the main hall. I looked out and saw an officer lying dead on the floor. One of the detainees must have been struggling with the officer and killed him. I was too scared to stay where I was, so I ran into one of the janitor closets and climbed up into the ceiling. I worked my way over the rafters to
a vent, where I could see them loading people onto about six buses. That’s when the first convoy left,” he says.

“What do you mean first convoy?” asks Gabe.

“After the buses drove off, everyone was waiting in groups for the next buses to arrive when all of the sudden people just started falling to the ground. Even a few of the officers who didn’t have their masks on fell. That’s when I realized there was something in the air polluting their lungs, so I quickly crawled back down and ripped this gasmask off the dead officer,” he says.

“How long ago did the buses deploy?” I ask.

“About two days ago,” he says.

“Great, we’re about two days behind. How are we going to track those buses from here?” Gabe asks.

“Easy, they’re being bused to Angola,” the man says, as he smells his fruit pie.

“As in, Louisiana State Penitentiary,” says Gabe, looking at me.

“How do you know this?” I ask.

“I overheard the officers talking about it when I was hiding underneath the desk.”

“Thanks. Oh, and enjoy your fruit pies,” I say.

“What, no Twinkies then?”

“They’re all gone,” says Gabe.

“What’s this world come to when a man can’t get a simple Twinkie,” whines the man.

I explain to the others where we are going as we get in the car and head east.

The Louisiana State Penitentiary hasn’t been used for decades, since most criminals have either expired from old age or they were executed during the first rebellion, when all prisons were ordered to be completely exterminated. Almost all the prisons in the US have been abandoned, with the exception of a few that still stand to serve as exercising training camps for federal officers.

Trials no longer exist to protect the rights of people; those decisions are made within the administration. Because the judicial branch has been severed from the balance of governmental power, there are no courts to prove citizens guilty or innocent. One man can decide the fate of your life, and nine times out of ten you are either sent to a labor farm or immediately sentenced to a public execution, and depending on your crime, you are either decapitated for a quick death, hung, drowned—or for the most vicious criminals, quartered and burned.

We drive through the night to the next city outside the Texas border and keep our distance before entering too deep into town. An old cemetery that sits atop a large hill overlooks the town below, and from our vantage point, we are able to see every activity that goes on. With Finnegan’s high-powered scope, he is able to determine how many federal officers are in the city.

“I estimate a few hundred officers occupying the downtown area and about fifty of them are securing the perimeter,” says Finnegan.

“I think it’s time to draw some deer into the woods,” I say.

We walk our way down the hill through the trees until we are about one hundred yards away from the perimeter. I have Finnegan and Henry run some trip wires in the open areas, attaching one end to a tree and the other to a high-powered dart gun that Gabe has created. One trip of the wire and the launcher will release fifty poisonous darts at 300 feet per second, penetrating the skin, and injecting lethal toxins that will render the person immobile within seconds.

While they are setting up the other launchers, I climb up in a tree with a perfect view of the officers. From this viewpoint, I should be able to pick them off with ease and still go unnoticed in the dark trees set against the black sky. “It’s time to stir up the hornets’ nest,” I say, as I pull a razor-tipped arrow from my quiver.

I sit up with my back resting against the tree for support and pull back on the bow with the arrow resting on the shelf. I take a deep breath, aim at one of the officers between the trees, and slowly exhale as I release the arrow. Without anyone noticing, the arrow pierces the skull with deadly silence. The officer’s muscles contract all at once, keeping him standing for a few seconds before they relax, and he collapses to the ground. Only then do the other officers take notice, and in sheer panic, they look around to see where the arrow came from. Before I release another arrow, I wait until they all move in closer to the woods.

The officers spread out carefully, moving toward us and combing the area. I spot one with a radio who attempts to call for help, but before he can get out a word on the airwaves, I split his forehead with an arrow. While I wait for the next victim, I sit between forked branches that conceal my entire body when I’m not drawing my bow back. Suddenly, one of the wires is tripped, and within seconds, the darts whistle through the air, killing about twenty officers.

I load my bow with another arrow when the officers that are flanked to the left run toward the tree Gabe is hiding behind. Just before I release an arrow, another wire is tripped, sending darts scattering like flies, and taking twenty-five more officers down. I look over to see
where Finnegan and Henry are positioned just to make sure their cover hasn’t been blown. They are spread out about fifteen yards apart on the ground, covered in leaves, and they are slowly crawling toward the middle of the field where the first wire was tripped.

There are three officers left standing in the middle of the field looking aimlessly around in all directions, waiting for the next attack. Two officers take off running back to town, while the other crouches down and walks in Gabe’s direction. Because Henry and Finnegan have not attached their sound suppressors to their guns, they don’t risk the chance of firing shots that may be heard in town, so they quickly run after the two officers fleeing for help.

I load an arrow, preparing to take down the fleeing officers, but before I can exhale, I’m distracted out of the corner of my eye by the officer close to Gabe’s position. Gabe is fighting with the safety button on his gun. The officer is now behind the tree where Gabe is hiding and walks around with his gun pointed toward Gabe’s head. I know I can’t draw my bow back fast enough to kill this man, so out of panic I yell at Gabe.

The officer quickly turns and notices me. He fires in the tree, and I try to hide behind the branches to dodge the bullets, but I lose my footing and slip downward a couple of feet. I grab onto one branch, but my bow has lodged between me and the trunk. I try to swing out enough to unhinge the bow, but my footing slips again, and I lose complete balance, sliding all the way down the trunk and onto the ground with the arrow still in my hand. The bow falls soon after and knocks me in the head, adding to my pain.

Gabe races around the large tree in the opposite direction trying to avoid the officer, but the officer switches directions and heads toward Gabe. I don’t have enough time to stand up, so with my butt on the ground, I pull back the arrow as fast as I can, and, without any concentration, I let the arrow fly from the string just like when I first shot in front of Finnegan in the den. In an instant, the arrow impales the upper part of the officer’s neck and out through his mouth, merely an inch from Gabe’s eye. The sheer dead weight of the man falls on Gabe, knocking him on the ground.

I run over to pull the officer off Gabe. “Thank you,” he says, panting as he sits up against the tree.

“Arena!” Finnegan yells from a distance.

The two men racing out of the woods have almost cleared the tree line and back to the grassy perimeter of town. I draw an arrow and aim for the officer who has fallen down since a still target is much easier
from a distance. As I release the arrow, the officer falls dead, but the one ahead of him is almost too far out of my range.

I draw one more arrow, aiming just a little higher to compensate for the distance. I stand firm, concentrate on my breathing, and exhale as I fling the arrow through the air at nearly a hundred yards away. As the aluminum shaft travels toward the officer, he dips down over a small hill and out of sight. I close my eyes and wince at my failure to take him down while Henry and Finnegan rest their hands on their knees, their heads down, panting from sprinting after the two officers.

Just then, the officer slowly walks up the other side of the hill with the arrow stuck in his back. He stands there for a few seconds before falling on the ground to his death. An absolutely impossible shot that only divine intervention could have helped make.

“Nice shooting,” says Gabe.

Henry picks up an old bird feather from the ground, walks over to me, and smiles. “Here, you can put that in your hat now, you’ve earned it.”

“We better hurry because this moment isn’t going to last,” I say.

I ask Gabe to carefully unhook the trip wire on the third dart gun and bring it with us. “Finnegan, you and Henry find a uniform that fits—I want to draw some of these officers out of town,” I say. “Gabe, I need to know which one of these tipped arrows will give me the biggest bang.”

“I think I know where you’re going with this. Use the red arrows with the titanium shafts—it should be more than enough to pierce through heavy armor.”

“When I give you the signal, try to lure them out toward you in front of the dart gun,” I say to Finnegan.

“Here, use this remote to launch the darts. The signal should reach up to about forty yards,” Gabe says to Henry.

“This is about being efficient. There are four of us and about two hundred of them, so let’s take advantage of what we have and terminate what we can in the first pass,” I say.

Henry and Finnegan stand in the alley near one of the town buildings, dressed in a full officer’s uniform with an issued helmet and gun, while Gabe and I climb up a ladder on the backside of a bank building to the roof. Gabe kneels at one corner of the roof and sets up some contraption inside his backpack, while I wait for the right time to send the signal to Henry and Finnegan.

I adjust the string suppressor on my bow and take out the red arrow from the quiver that Gabe suggested. I carefully balance the
heavy explosive tip on the shelf of the bow. I nod to Gabe so he can signal Henry and Finnegan to get ready.

I pull back the tight string, resting the knuckle of my thumb on the side of my cheek, aim for the armored tank in the middle of the street, and release the titanium shaft of destruction. The arrow sails just beneath the turret on the tank, and a flash of fire instantly lights up the sky, followed by a thunderous roar, sending pieces of metal from the tank flying through the air.

Finnegan and Henry run out in the open, signaling for other officers to come. “The rebels went that way, come on,” Finnegan says to one of the leading officers. About thirty-five men are lured into the alley and out into the grassy opening where the darts are deployed, killing almost all the soldiers. The few officers who escaped the darts are shot down with precision by Henry and Finnegan.

I pull a second red arrow from my quiver and strike down another heavily armed vehicle trying to flee. Because the blast is so great from all the weapons the vehicle is carrying, about two dozen officers near the vehicle are killed instantly. With all the officers running in a panic in all different directions, the townspeople begin to fight back. Two armored trucks pull up from the north side and release about a hundred more soldiers to diffuse the small revolt, but their vision becomes quickly hindered by a ball of black smoke from a secondary explosion.

Gabe stands up, turns his palms up, and two coated barrels extend outward from his sleeves. He squeezes both index fingers on two triggers below the barrels, as small metal square nets about five inches in length and wide come flying out like bullets toward the officers who are impaired by the black smoke. Hundreds of these copper metal nets stick to their skin, frying their bodies with electric shocks, and leaving them disabled while their muscles spastically convulse until they succumb to brain death.

Since the high ground will always have the advantage, I save my ammo and pick off twenty more officers with my bow from the rooftop. The officers left are either shot by Henry and Finnegan, or they have surrendered to the people who have fought back in a first of many revolutions to come. What has started now cannot be changed.

Gabe and I climb back down the ladder and join Henry and Finnegan, who have discarded their uniforms so they are not mistaken for officers by the people. As the smoke from the explosions dissipates from the ground and into the sky, the people gather up all the remaining officers and put them in the center of town square with their hands shackled.

While they are being tied down, I take a moment to walk around the encircled officers, looking them in their eyes, and wondering how many here will ask for forgiveness. All I think about are all those women and children who suffered a senseless death back in our town. I look out toward the crowd gathering around and see that Finnegan is gesturing for me to go. I slowly walk away with Henry, Finnegan, and Gabe, but I stop just as the crowd turns into complete silence and one voice speaks out.

“Who are you to come here and save us?” asks a woman in the back.