I hoped he wasn't just cleverly trying to psyche us out. The store owner could certainly be part of the gang… but for now I'd remain optimistic.
If Samantha did get in touch with the police, how long would we have to defend ourselves against these psychos before help arrived? We'd never even found the fishing poles.
I waited silently for a few moments. I couldn't hear any activity outside. Maybe they were conserving ammunition. Maybe their guns were empty. I wasn't about to pop my head into view to check it out.
Then I heard another vehicle approach from the rear.
"Is this bad?" I asked Roger.
"Real bad," he informed me. "Three more trucks."
Maybe they were coming in peace. Maybe they'd talk some sense into the other two, we'd all have a nice chuckle over this silly misunderstanding, and we'd get together for a late lunch and a friendly pillow fight.
Or maybe not.
"Forget this," I said. "We're getting out of here. I'll plow right over one of these trucks if I have to. Everybody hold on."
I floored the gas pedal.
And then I very quickly realized that this had been an extraordinarily bad idea, right in line with many of my other extraordinarily bad ideas of the past.
The camper began to topple to the right.
As everybody else screamed, and I held onto the steering wheel as tightly as I could, the camper fell onto its side with an almost deafening crash.
Chapter Six
I TUMBLED OUT OF the driver's seat and smashed against the other side of the camper as glass rained down upon me. Joe landed on my side with a yelp.
How could I have been so stupid?
The answer was simple: It was me.
I heard sobbing and screaming in the back of the camper, which was a hell of a lot better than corpse silence. "Everybody talk to me!" I called out.
"We're all alive," Helen said.
"You suck, Andrew!" Roger informed me.
I twisted myself around and got to my feet. On the other end of the overturned camper, the bathroom door was hanging open and swinging next to Roger as he tried to move past it.
I was sore and a little dizzy, but I crouched down and made my way back to the main part of the camper, walking on top of the refrigerator door. Helen was crawling out of what had been the upper bunk. She had a nasty gash on the side of her head but looked otherwise unharmed.
Helen grabbed Theresa's arms, and I grabbed Kyle's, and we helped our children out of the bunk. I hugged Kyle, trying to forget for a moment that we were still very deeply screwed.
"What was that all about?" Goblin shouted. I heard a door slam, as if he'd gotten out of his truck. "Do you think this improved your situation?"
"Bite me!" I replied, proving my spirit wasn't yet broken but that I was too shaken up to think of anything more clever to say than "Bite me."
Then I thought, oops, I should've shut up and pretended to be dead. What a dork.
"We're not here to kill you," Goblin said, "but we'll do it if we have to, no problem."
"What's our other option?" I asked.
"Come out and give yourselves up."
That didn't sound like a very good option. On the other hand, if their master plan had been to just blow us all away, they wouldn't have bothered with the whole trap-us-between-two-trucks thing.
There had to be a way out. Quite honestly, I was more comfortable with the idea of sprinting toward the woods and dodging bullets than surrendering.
Joe barked.
"We'll even let the dog go," Goblin promised, and the others chuckled. They sounded close.
Unfortunately, with the camper on its side, our methods of escape were limited. Climbing up through the windows on top was a sure way to get a shotgun blast through the skull. That left the broken front windshield and the rear window. The rear window had shattered in the fall but so much of our camping junk was piled in front of it there wasn't room to climb out.
At least, no room for anybody but Joe. Yet somehow I didn't see this particular pug as one that would perform Lassie services for our family.
"Are you sure we can't settle this through a bribe?" I asked, silently ushering Helen and the kids toward the front windshield. "We've got marshmallows."
"Sorry. Ogre might go for it, but not the rest of us."
I wondered who Ogre was. Probably the huge guy in the second truck.
"What if we toast them first?" I asked.
"I'm not here to perform a fuckin' comedy routine with you," Goblin said. "You've got ten seconds to come out here before things get really ugly. Nine… eight… seven…"
"My wife's leg is broken!" I said. "She can't move."
"…six… five…"
"It's pinned under some suitcases! She can't go anywhere!" I moved over to the rear of the camper, where Roger was hurriedly moving our gear out of the way.
"…four… three… two…"
"I'm serious!"
"…one. Time's up. How about we toast those marshmallows for you?"
Seconds later, a bottle fell through the broken window on what was now the camper's ceiling. A bottle with burning cloth stuffed into the neck. The Molotov cocktail struck the wood paneling and burst into flames, separating me from my family and forcing Roger and I to squish against the rear of the camper.
As the camper filled with smoke, Joe rushed around the flames, barking loudly, to where Roger and I stood. I could barely see Helen on the other side, her arms wrapped tightly around Theresa and Kyle.
A second Molotov cocktail fell right where the first had landed. Believe it or not, I'd been in worse situations, but this one sucked pretty intensely.
I picked up the closest weapon: Kyle's Wiffle bat.
Roger found one of the fishing poles.
A third Molotov cocktail shattered against the wood, which kind of seemed like overkill by this point. The camper was so filled with smoke I couldn't see my wife and kids anymore, though I heard Helen coughing.
Joe squirmed underneath a blanket.
Obviously, we couldn't stay in the camper any longer. I crawled out through the rear window, coughing as well. Though my eyes burned and my vision was a bit blurry, the shotgun barrel two feet from my face was perfectly clear.
Roger followed me. He immediately was faced with a shotgun barrel of his very own.
A woman held the shotgun pointed at me. She had dirty black hair cut short, and looked about forty. Her blue jeans had holes in the knees and she wore a white lab coat with a few dried bloodstains. Her ID badge identified her as "Witch."
Roger's new buddy, "Troll," was also in his forties. He wore shorts and a light blue T-shirt, which showed off dozens, maybe hundreds, of scars on his arms and legs. There were also four or five fresh cuts. A large knife with a serrated edge dangled from his belt, and he wore a rather nice tie that matched his shirt.
Smoke billowed from the overturned camper, and I couldn't see Helen, Kyle, and Theresa behind it.
"Look at this mess you made," said Goblin, gesturing toward the camper and damaged trucks as he walked over to us. "That was pretty damn stupid. I should have Troll cut you up for that."
Troll flashed me a rotten-toothed grin.
Helen stepped into view from behind the camper, staggering. She held Kyle's and Theresa's hands. The big guy (five hundred pounds, at least) I assumed was Ogre was behind them, along with a kid who looked about twenty.
"Oh, yeah, he could cut you up real nice," said Goblin. "Make you look as bad as he does. Do you have a special attachment to any of those fingers of yours? How about your nose?" He flicked my nose with his index finger. "Would you mind so terribly if he sliced off your nose?"
I didn't respond.
"What about the kids' noses? Would you like that?" He looked over at Theresa and Kyle, and then back at me. "They're yours, right? They sorta look like you. Let's just hope they grow up with better problem-solving skills."