He pivoted to look for the boy, thinking it would be stupid to be shot by a child after all this, but felt something huge rise up in the darkness behind him. He turned, instinctively sidestepping, to see Vance swinging a big forearm toward Peter’s head.
Vance connected. It was only a glancing blow, but it still buckled Peter’s knees and knocked the night-vision goggles off his head. He backpedaled to bring his weapon to bear, planning to shoot the fucker somewhere permanent this time. But the huge man flashed out a hand and grabbed the rifle barrel, pulling it toward him and redirecting Peter’s aim away.
Vance was incredibly strong. Peter had the sling around his neck and felt himself yanked forward with the gun. He didn’t want to pull the trigger because he wouldn’t hit Vance and he’d lost track of Lewis in the dark. In a tug-of-war for the rifle, Peter would surely lose. He set his feet, anyway, knowing if the huge man managed to pull Peter close, he was finished.
But this moment of resistance gave him an extra half-second to find the magazine release and let it fall. While it was still in the air, he ducked his head to free himself from the rifle sling and let go of the forestock. As Vance pulled the weapon away, Peter hooked the charging lever with the side of his hand, emptying the final round from the chamber.
Then Vance had the rifle but didn’t seem to realize he had no ammunition. He spun the weapon and raised it to fire. As he pulled the trigger, Peter stepped closer and drop-kicked him in the groin.
The enormous man made a wordless bellow like a wounded bullfacing the matador, but he didn’t double over or even put a protective hand down to his crotch. Instead he threw the rifle away and moved sideways to put Peter between him and the night where Lewis would be trying to find a shooting angle.
Peter tried to circle left to give Lewis a shot, but Vance crabstepped right, matching him step for step. Peter couldn’t see much in the dark, but he could see how the man moved, could see pale, heavy hands up and ready but his guard relatively open, as though no man had ever hit him hard enough to make him hurt. He was quick and strong and apparently unaffected by the blows he’d taken, but he was also weighed down by thirty pounds of body armor.
Then Vance rushed him, trying to run him down or trap him against the fence. Peter was ready. He feinted left, the way he’d circled before, then slipped right and drove a hard left fist under the huge man’s raised chin and directly into his exposed Adam’s apple.
Vance caught him in an outstretched arm to pull him close. But the damage had been done. With a single blow, Peter had crushed the other man’s trachea, blocking his airway. Vance stumbled back, hand to his throat, trying to pull in a breath but only achieving a kind of awful wet wheeze.
Peter stepped in and kicked him in the knee. When Vance fell thrashing to the pavement, Peter sidestepped a grasping fist and kicked Vance in the throat. The huge man continued to thrash spasmodically, but the awful wet wheeze stopped and he began to suffocate in earnest.
Then Lewis was there with his rifle up, aimed at Vance’s head. He pulled the trigger once and Vance stopped thrashing.
Peter looked at him. Lewis shrugged. “I didn’t want to have to give that motherfucker an emergency tracheotomy or some damn thing.”
“You just didn’t want to have to lift him into the back of the truck,” Peter said.
Lewis gave him a tilted grin. “That, too.”
They heard a noise and turned together to see Hollis scrambling to his feet, looking around for a weapon.
Peter held out his hand and Lewis put the rifle in it. Peter aimed and shot Hollis twice more in the chest plate, hoping he’d broken a rib or two.
Hollis fell back to the pavement, keening in pain. Somehow Peter didn’t feel sorry for him. He handed the rifle back to Lewis, then kicked Hollis onto his back and began to strip off his armor. “Lewis, you see the other one? The kid?”
Lewis bent and shined his flashlight under the SUV. “Boy, come up on out of there. Don’t make me shoot your skinny white ass.”
—
Peter pulled a roll of duct tape from his pack, rolled Hollis onto his stomach, and began to tape the older man’s wrists, ankles, and mouth. It was harder in the dark. Lewis stepped out and waved at June, who went back for the Tahoe and roared down the access drive five minutes later, pulling around to the side so her headlights lit the area like a crime scene. Which, Peter supposed, it was.
He’d thought Hollis would try to talk, to justify himself, but he didn’t. He’d probably read the expression on Peter’s face and knew he was a hair’s breadth away from a bullet to the head. Instead he just lay still and closed his eyes like a kicked dog. Peter was tempted to roll the man up in a tarp, just to let him experience how much fun it was, but reminded himself to be a better person than that.
He only wished Durant and the Messenger were there, too. To Peter, they were worse than the others. The Messenger for spinning his web of bullshit, and Durant for betraying his oath to serve and protect. He wanted them taken alive and healthy, so they could spendthe rest of their lives behind bars. If some civic-minded convict didn’t shank them first.
Then he realized he was still acting as if the lights would come back on like they always had, and society would continue as before. That there would still be police and judges and trials and prisons. Instead of looting and food riots and starvation. People dead in the streets and in their homes. So many dead that there wouldn’t be enough humans left alive to bury them.
He saw Lewis’s grim face and hooded eyes and knew he was thinking the same thing. If this was the new reality, they would need to get back to Wisconsin as quickly as possible. Peter’s parents would need help. Lewis would want to be with Dinah and the boys.
They duct-taped Hollis and lifted him into the Tahoe’s cargo bay. June pointed at the kid, sitting against the fence, eyes wide. He couldn’t have been more than twelve. “What about him?”
Peter had taped his ankles, wrists, and mouth, too. There was no way to know whether he was a true believer or if his parents had pulled him into this mess. Either way, he’d rigged and flown the drones, so he was up to his neck in it.
“I got him.” Lewis threw him over a shoulder, then carried him to the Tahoe and laid him down beside Hollis. “You best behave, boy, or you ain’t gonna like what happens.”
Peter walked the parking lot, looking at the sheriff’s deputies crumpled on the blacktop in the forlorn postures of the dead. They deserved a decent funeral, and he hoped they would get it. The sheriff would come looking for them, or someone in their families. But he didn’t want their loved ones to see them in this final indignity, abandoned where they lay like so many broken toys. So he did what he had done on many battlefields. He tried to restore as much of their dignity as he could. He rolled them onto their backs and straightened their clothesand their limbs. He closed their eyes and folded their hands across their chests. Noting as he did that the armor-piercing rounds had punched right through their vests. June and Lewis watched in silence.
When Peter was finished, Lewis walked toward the big pickups, pointing to the five-gallon fuel cans in their racks. “We gonna need those,” he said. “We ain’t got enough to get to Seattle. With the power out, we can’t just pull over at a gas station and fill the tank.”
“Find some rope,” Peter said. “We can tie them on the roof.”
