Storm Tide Rising: Blackout Volume 2 (30 page)

Then the darkness folded over him, and there was nothing.

Ch.48

Bottle Caps

Joe reached over and pinched Eric's toe hard. His son sat up immediately, his eyes wide. Joe put one finger over his mouth and motioned with his head. Eric nodded and climbed carefully out of his bed. Joe led the way onto the back porch where two steaming cups of instant coffee sat on the top step. Joe offered one to his son.

Eric took the coffee and blew on the top, then sipped it slowly. Joe picked up two leather rifle cases and handed one to Eric. "Remember that?" he asked, and Eric nodded an affirmative. "It's still sighted."

Joe didn't wait for Eric to say anything. He turned and walked down the steps without even a glance back. Eric followed after a moment, and they walked in silence. The morning was cool enough to be chilly, and it was still a long way to dawn. Grayness was just starting to show at the edges of the sky, and Joe had to concentrate to find his way down through the garden field and to the fence.

Eric hesitated briefly when they entered the trees at the back edge of the garden field. But he clenched his jaw and followed his father. Joe waited just long enough for Eric to catch up to him before crossing the fence. A game trail led along the back side of the ridge and down into an old creek ravine. The deer path led across the broad, flat floor of the ravine and up the other side. It opened into the river field about two thirds of the way from the back end of the field. The far tree line and the river another hundred yards after it served as the back edge of the farm's property line.

By the time they were in the open again, Eric was breathing hard and sweating. The sky was fully gray now, and a small edge of pinkish orange colored the eastern horizon. Joe kept walking until he reached the far end of the field where a low mound of dirt had been piled years before. A broad, flat sheet of wood was nailed to a faded and cracked frame built into the dirt berm. Joe taped up three targets, then pressed two bottle caps into the wood with the palm of one hand.

He turned and took the rifle case from Eric and set it along with his own next to the wood frame. He tossed the second half of his coffee into the bushes and put the Styrofoam cup up on a tree branch. He turned back to his son, who was staring at the ground between his feet.

"I never told you about the necklace I wear," Joe said softly, and his son's head popped up. "I know you’ve asked a thousand times, but I never told you what it is. There's a reason for that. Some things you can't be told, son. Some things you have to learn, have to experience for yourself."

Eric looked confused, but he didn't say anything. Joe walked over to him and hooked a thumb under the neck of his shirt. He brought out a leather cord that held a string of bottle caps. Most of them were faded and worn, but a few at one end were still clearly painted and sharp in their detail.

"You know a little of what I did in the Navy," Joe continued. "More now than when you were little, but you still don't know it all. More than a few times, it came down to some pretty tight situations. Gun fight, tight quarters. You get to see the people on the other end of it up close. A man's got to find a way to deal with that. A way to process it and still keep himself whole. If he doesn’t deal, it's the kind of thing that can eat him up inside."

"Dad, I'm all right," Eric said, but his voice still had that hollow, empty sound.

Joe shook his head. "Son, I know you say that now, but you’re not all right—not yet. And that's okay. The first time is always the most difficult. It never gets easy; at least, you better hope it doesn't. But the first time is the toughest. A lot of what I used to do was from a distance, detached. I could handle those just fine. It was the ones that were up close, face to face, that got to me. That's what these are."

Joe held the short necklace out for a moment, memories washing silently over him like an ocean tide.

"Each one of these is a moment in time," Joe said softly. "Each one of these could have been the end of me, but they weren't. I made a choice, I acted, and I lived. These are so I never forget why I'm still here; so I don't forget the price that's been paid."

Eric looked at the bottle caps on the leather chord in silence. Joe could see deep thoughts rolling behind his quiet eyes and in the clenching of his son's jaw. "How many are there?"  Eric asked after the silence had stretched between them.

The eastern sky was starting to get light, and its soft grayness was complete and slightly luminescent. The sun would be up in a half hour, maybe less. Joe bent and got the two rifle cases from where he'd set them. He tied a string to one of the upright boards of the target frame and handed Eric's rifle case to him.

"There are thirteen on this string," Joe answered as he started walking back across the field. "This isn't the only string of them, though. I know the number, but it's something you'll never hear me say out loud. It's not anybody else's business, son. You do what's right, and you do what's necessary to keep breathing."

Eric nodded, and they walked on in silence for a while. When they were halfway across the field, Eric suddenly stopped. "They were going to kill us, weren't they?"  Eric asked softly. "Those men yesterday," he said, though he didn't have to, "they would have killed us all."

Joe took a deep, slow breath. "Eventually, yes," he answered. "That man and his two partners meant to take every single thing we have, son. He said it, and I could see it in his eyes. They would have shot you and me and Bill first. Then Gilbert and Levy too. He's old, but strong and stubborn as a pine stump. They would have talked us out of our weapons, then shot us and done whatever they wanted with the women and children before killing them too."

Eric lifted his head after a moment, his eyes hard. "I don't feel sorry for them," he said. "I just feel...different. Strange."

"Son, I've had most of my adult life, years of training and decades of experience, to make sure I'm as prepared as possible to pull the trigger when that time comes," Joe answered. "And I still feel strange inside when it happens. But you did what I told you to do, and we're all alive and safe now because you didn’t hesitate. I've seen bad men in my day, son, and those were bad men who meant to do bad things. Sometimes there ain't but one way to stop that kind of man."

They reached the other end of the long field, and Joe took both rifle cases and set them to the side. "This is what I do afterwards, after I have to face one of those terrible moments and pull the trigger. I come here and focus only on the shot. Breathing, wind, distance, squeezing the trigger... every aspect of it, every element of it. And then, I imagine myself in that same situation, heart pounding, lives on the line. I look down range through the scope, sight in on the target, and hold there. I'll run through my options, what I could have done differently and whether or not I could have made it out any other way without taking the life that I took. And if I can't find any other way out, I squeeze the trigger, and take the shot."

Joe held out the necklace of bottle caps again, and Eric's eyes went wide as he saw for the first time that they hadn't been drilled through. In the center of each round cap was a bullet hole.

"These are a reminder," Joe said quietly, "that I did the right thing. I did the only thing I could have done to make it out of that situation. I took the shot."

Silence stretched between them, and the first rays of sunlight fell across the field, barely touching the tops of the tree line in the distance. "What will you do if one day you realize there had been another way, that you didn't
have
to take the shot?"  Eric asked finally.

Joe shook his head. "I don't know, son. I never had it happen before, and I pray it never does."

Joe knelt and unzipped his rifle case. He pulled out his bolt action .25-06 from its case. A metal bipod with spring loaded legs flipped out easily, and Joe took up a prone position on the slightly raised firing mound. A plastic ammunition box went a little in front of his face and to the right within easy reach of his right hand. He looked up at Eric and motioned with his head behind him.

"Take a few steps back and put your ears on," Joe said, slipping a pair of orange silicone foam ear plugs into his ears.

Joe focused on his breathing and cleared his mind. When he was ready, Joe moved his eye to the scope and flipped open the caps on each end of the metal tube. The image of the target board leapt across the intervening distance with stark clarity. Joe watched the string he'd tied to the right side of the target structure flutter in a slight breeze, and he reached up to adjust the sighting dials for the distance and the wind.

With deliberate care and focus, Joe took control of his breathing and forced it into a slow, regular rhythm. His mind processed through the tense confrontation the day before, options rapidly presenting themselves almost subconsciously and being dismissed almost as quickly and as reflexively. The mental training of SEAL life had taken over, and his brain tried to attack the problem and unravel the tactical knot in any way it could that didn't end with either Joe pulling the trigger on the strangers or the strangers pulling the trigger on him.

In the space of a few breaths, Joe's mind cycled through the options, and he came to his conclusion: there simply had been no other option. No matter what happened, there were only two ways for that encounter to end once it had begun; either Joe wound up looking down at the strangers' bodies or they wound up looking down at his. Joe took a deep, slow breath and let out half of it. He slowly, carefully squeezed the trigger. The rifle fired with a loud crack, sending the small projectile down range. Joe held the rifle on target until he heard the impact of the bullet just a fraction of a second before the rifle's echo reached him.

Joe slowly pulled the bolt back and caught the spent shell in his right hand. It went into the plastic ammo case, and he closed the lid. Joe flipped the legs of the rifle up and set it in his case.

"I don't know if this well help you," Joe admitted to Eric. "It's helped me over the years, and it got me pulling the trigger again. That's important, you know. The first one can be tough, but if you don't get past it, you can hesitate the next time you
have
to pull the trigger. And that hesitation just might kill you."

Eric nodded and set his case down. He pulled out his .270 rifle and set up his bipod. The five shot exterior box magazine was loaded and ready. Eric tapped it into place and chambered a round.

"Take a few shots on the paper first," Joe said. "Warm up your rifle, and your shoulder. It's been a while since you shot that one."

Eric nodded and got back behind his scope. He clicked the safety off and began to slow his breathing. Joe watched and felt a swell of pride as Eric worked himself into a rhythm for the shot. Still, it was a long moment before Eric finally pulled the trigger. Joe didn't need a pair of binoculars to know that Eric had hit his mark.

 His son rarely missed.

Ch.49

Going Bad

Beth was awake when Joe left. He was quiet and careful not to shake the bed when he got up, but it didn't matter; she hadn't slept a wink all night. She didn't move until she heard the back door open and close twice. Eric was with him, and that was a good sign. She waited in bed as long as she could, but eventually she became restless. Beth made her way carefully through the sleeping shapes curled up on the floor and furniture everywhere she looked. She eased the door to the front porch open and then closed again.

Outside it was cool, and the sky had just begun to turn gray. She stood still and listened as the world slowly came awake. When it was light enough to see the tree line on the far side of the field, an owl hooted somewhere across the river. After a while, another answered from the edge of hearing in the opposite direction. The two exchanged a few more calls, then finally fell silent.

Other birds began to wake and trumpet the fact that morning had arrived. They tweeted, whistled, and called to each other. Several of the houses on the Run had chickens of one sort or another, and the roosters began to crow loudly. Squirrels were starting to chatter and move among the branches when the eastern sky showed its first hint of orange near the horizon.

Beth never heard the front door open or close when her mother joined her. She was simply not there one moment, and beside her another. Beth did her best not to jump.

"Hard time sleeping?"  Blossom asked in a soft voice. She held a cup of coffee that was almost the same shade of faded eggshell as the small porcelain cup that held it. She liked her coffee heavy on the milk, heavy on the sugar, and light on the Sanka. "I get that sometimes too, but it ain't my own. I borrowed it from Levy years ago, and I just ain't ever give it back. He used to get up sometimes and walk. I'd get worried at first when he went outside, but he'd always be back before the sun came up."

Blossom paused to take a sip of her coffee.

"He never took the truck or the car," Blossom said after a long moment. "I got up once and checked, but all the keys were hanging by the kitchen door, and all the vehicles were in the yard. I guess sometimes when a man goes to war, coming home is a process."

Blossom paused and gave Beth a meaningful look. Beth knew it was her turn to share now, but she stubbornly refused. "How's your coffee?" she asked instead.

Blossom never batted an eye. "Good enough," she said with a smile and took another sip. "The milk's going bad in another day or two, so we'd better use it while we can."  Beth nodded and opened her mouth, but Blossom wasn't done yet. "And that don't really answer my question."

"You didn't ask one," Beth shot back.

Blossom just took another sip. "I did so," she said after swallowing her coffee. "Asked you if you couldn't sleep. Never did say yes or no."

"No, I couldn't sleep, okay?"  Beth snapped. "We buried three people the other side of the dike up there yesterday. Three men my husband, my boy, and a guest in our house shot. Men that held us at gunpoint, threatened all of our lives, and probably planned to kill us on top of all of that. No. I couldn't sleep."