I glance back at Cal and Denton to see if they have a plan or want to give some kind of signal. But they both have their eyes trained on the people pointing weapons at us.
“Check them,” the first woman who spoke says. She walks around us as someone to her right comes forward and starts patting us down. He moves on to Cal.
“Traveling with any bags?” he asks.
“We checked them with TSA,” Cal says. The guy gives him a shove and a fake “ha-ha.”
Then Denton speaks. “Lacy?”
The woman—a white woman in her forties with her hair tied backinto a ponytail—turns to him. “Holy shit, Denton?” She walks over to him and holds out a hand, helping him up. She pulls him into a hug. “We thought Rosewood had you killed. Nadine?”
“She’s alive. She’s with...” He turns to everyone else around him, still on their knees. “We’re good; we’re not here to hurt you.”
Lacy nods and motions for us all to stand. “Give them their weapons back.”
Her men do as she says while Denton launches into his explanation—how Nadine got him out when she heard that Rosewood and a few others were planning on framing him. Then he asks what’s going on.
“Things got worse after you left,” she says. “People were starving. Kids dying. We’d finally had enough.”
“Rosewood?” Denton asks.
She shakes her head. “He’s somewhere in there.” She nods toward the line of cars. “We cornered him and his people about a week ago, set up a perimeter and have been waiting them out. We know they’re low on food. It’s just a matter of time now, so we have teams stationed at every intersection.”
“Where is he?” Cal asks.
“We don’t know,” Lacy says. “We could do a house-to-house, but it would take too long, and he and his men might have set their own traps by now. We figure we can wait them out longer than they can wait us out. Eventually they’ll run out of supplies and his little army is going to turn against him.”
“Where are your blockades?” Cal asks.
Lacy goes over to the truck and takes a red marker out of herpocket. I watch as she marks off the roads around us on our map. It’s a rectangle that looks to surround fifteen or sixteen blocks. Smack-dab in the middle is the sheriff’s station. When we first came to Fort Caroline, that’s where we had to register our guns and request ammo.
It was one of the places Denton had mentioned Rosewood might be holing up. And if there was always a plan to protect it, maybe that’s where he’s hiding out right now.
“How much longer do you think they can survive in there?” Denton asks.
“A week?” says Lacy. “Maybe two, but that’s it. Even if they don’t starve, they’ll be out of water soon.”
“How do you even know they’re still in there?” Cal asks.
As if on cue, gunshots pop from the blockade behind us. Someone from Lacy’s group drops, and bullets hit the ground around us.
“Take cover!” Lacy shouts. We run to the other side of the truck and RV, ducking down. Niki is to my right, and I see Denton crouch around the back of the RV and lock eyes with me. Our group returns fire.
But then there are more shots from the overgrown baseball field to our right. Lacy yells to Denton and Cal that we need to seek cover, and four people from her group start shooting in the direction of the baseball field. We grab our packs and weapons, and Denton latches on to my shoulder, pulling me to my feet. I reach for Niki, but she falls behind.
I shrug off Denton’s hand and run back to her. We stay low and he watches us, waiting until we’re next to him before following Lacy and the others.
Once we’re behind another blockade—this one made of concretebarriers and wood—we stay down while Lacy and her team talk to Cal and a few others about how to push back. The shots keep coming. Denton and Niki are listening intently. Lacy talks about retreating to another group for reinforcements, but when she points at the map in front of her, it’s in the opposite direction of the sheriff’s department.
A group of four provide more cover as one of Rosewood’s people leaps over the blockade from the direction we came. When we have to move again, Denton glances back to make sure I’m following. A bullet whizzes past my ear and I duck. Someone to my right falls, hot blood spattering the side of my face.
There’s another blockade ahead to our right.
“Look out!” someone on our side shouts. But it’s too late.
The person in front of me stumbles backward—all their weight drops on me, and I fall to the road. And more people are shooting. Everything is chaos. This isn’t how this was supposed to go; it was supposed to be more gradual, less violent. We didn’t realize Rosewood and whoever sided with him would be so desperate. Because that’s what this is. They’ve been trapped and have only days left before they begin to starve.
The person on top of me is gasping like they can’t breathe. I recognize him. It’s the young guy from the back of the RV. The one who said he wouldn’t mind a little firefighting. But the fear in his eyes as blood spills from his mouth and the holes in his chest says the opposite. His hands grab mine; they’re already cold and clammy.
