The trucks came up the drive, winding their way past the houses. Will was a couple hundred yards from the church, standing in the forested flatlands that came up from the lake, his view of the place seen through stands of pine, but the pine trunks were not dense enough to stop the trucks if they decided to turn and go for him.
Ahead, in the direction he needed to go, there was another quarter mile or so before he would reach the protection of the bluff. He was exposed and though he had felt isolated and alone when he had come down from the church and moved past the preliminary makings of the perimeter fence, a feeling of desperate solitude now seemed to emanate up from within his marrow.
Working quickly, Will dropped Drew to the ground then raised the rifle and put the lens to his eye. He could see the trucks still coming, they had almost reached the church. Many Eden’s Gate members were waiting there and as Will moved the rifle scope to the people, Holly and a few others he recognized, he saw all of them were pointing out across the compound and into the trees to the place he now stood looking back.
He swung the rifle up then bent and grasped Drew and put him back up over his shoulder. The man struggled for a moment but Will simply set off across the lowlands as fast as he could go, jostling Drew across his shoulder as he went. The first shot was heard as it buzzed past a few feet above his head. The next went wide and he saw it dig into a pine trunk to his left. Will cut and moved, veering across the land, trying to get as much forest between him and those who were shooting at him.
When he looked back he could see all five trucks had stopped right there next to the church and men had begun to move out and drop from the truck beds. He watched a distant rifle flare and he heard the shot. The bullet cut across the air a foot in front of him. They had a man like him up there, with a scope and hunting rifle, and Will knew now it was only a matter of time before a shot went true.
Will ran on. He dropped into a small depression between two rolling hills that held a dry creek at the bottom, and when he came back up the opposite rise and turned to look toward the church only two trucks were now parked there. Dust hung in the air and he knew almost without a doubt that the other three trucks were coming for him.
He gained the rise just as another bullet tore up the earth beside his foot, the dirt spraying high across his arm and side. He knew he was going to lose this one. He knew the bullets were getting closer. He came to the top of the rise and he went down the opposite side but he stopped and looked behind him. A bullet cut the air and Will dropped to the ground and with a shout from beneath the gag, Drew went rolling away from him and lay sideways down the hill, still struggling against the cording that wrapped his wrists and ankles.
Will could hear the trucks closing in on him, the sound of gravel and dirt echoing across the nearby lake and in among the trees. He kept his eyes forward. He had good cover here, but he knew it would not last if they caught him and surrounded him where he lay. Looking ahead he heard the engines working up the rise that stretched away from the compound. Then suddenly he saw them. They came into view moving as fast as possible, slowed only by the trees they had to weave among.
For a second all three of the trucks broke into the open, crossing a barren patch of meadow within the forest. Will watched them come. He was slightly above them and from time to time he lost them behind the trunks of pine and underbrush. The drivers navigated across the uneven ground and the engines raced as they came into the open and gunned their motors across the open meadow. From back atop the small hill where the church sat another rifle flare was seen. The bullet hit just before him, spraying dirt and bits of rock upward in the air.
He had no time. He had nothing but a sick feeling in his stomach that heralded the coming of his own destruction. Another bullet hit and sprayed him again with dirt. He looked to where the man was standing in the bed of one of the two remaining trucks by the church. He stood there with the rifle braced up over the roof of the cab and Will could see the glint of the scope there in the light of the lowering sun.
Will brought his own rifle around. He estimated there was now almost a quarter mile between this man and him. He looked at the way the nearby grass was moving, he looked at the trunks between him and the church. He measured the space between and the crosswind. He allowed for drop and even offered up a prayer. He put the scope to his eyes now and he thought if there is one thing you do right today, let this be it.
The rifle jumped and Will had time only to settle the scope back on his eye as he watched the man atop the truck buckle back and fall away.
Now the trucks had come across the little meadow and Will watched them through the scope, the sound of the engines racing and the men in the passenger seats pointing on ahead and one now moving up and out of the open window, assault rifle in hand as the truck bore down on Will. Less than a thousand feet of space now to close.
Will worked the bolt. Then he took aim through the trunks of pines that made up the forest between him and them. He fired. He worked the bolt again. He kept firing from the prone position there atop the little rise and he watched the bullets spark and skip across the metal of hoods and siding. He watched the windshield crack and spider web on the nearest truck. He worked the bolt till there were no cartridges left to fire and the casings lay about him in the grass, hot from within the chamber.
The trucks were eating up the land, navigating both forest floor and the tree trunks that grew everywhere about. Will dug in his pockets and brought the last of his .308 cartridges up. Some fell and were lost there among the low vegetation, mixing in among the spent casings and blades of grass. He loaded and slammed the bolt forward, and he was firing again, rapidly, working through the cartridges as fast as they would fire.
He took the mirror from one truck, flattened out one tire and watched the driver fight to keep control, the truck soon sliding and going over, rolling down an incline and then out of sight. Will shot and fired again, the bullet digging through the engine block of another truck, and the truck now puttering to a stop. Will was firing even as the men dove and moved for cover. He was near out of bullets by the time the third truck had come within a hundred yards. Will stood now and ran, knowing if he did not move they would soon be on him.
He reached Drew and, with the adrenaline still coursing, Will brought Drew up over his shoulder and he pumped up the rise beyond with his thighs feeling like they had caught on fire. It was then, almost as the truck was on them, that the little house blew, the light seen in the forest boughs, and the sound following soon after.
Will turned. He had thought that the house would not go. He had thought that if it was to go that the gas would have ignited already. And that the little house was not there and the cloud of fire and smoke now rose above it all was to him almost as much of a shock as he could now see it was to those back at Eden’s Gate and to the remaining men who followed him in the truck.
The last truck veered. He watched the driver shift and look behind as if the fireball might be heading out across the land to get them. Will paused only for a second, recognizing this was the time he needed to make the bluff and the dense trees and forest that clung to the rocks there.
He took off running again. His feet feeling like two pieces of stone pulled along behind his body. His heart felt inside his chest like it was pumping something that was half acid through his bloodstream. And though he had been cutting a fairly straight path before, he moved down from atop the nearest rise and went running in the depression, keeping hidden from the truck behind, following the curve between the two rises that he could see now would lead him directly to the bluff.