“The problem is that would require the kind of mind most of these Cro-Magnons don’t have! So we need a plan B to get food!”
Nathan leaned back and waited. “You know, guys, I’m not exactly known for having an endless supply of patience. You make me wait more than a minute, and the redhead gets it. Then the brunette. Then the girl. And I count fast.”
“Um… well, you can go after the guards and—”
He made a game show buzzer sound. “Wrong answer. We tried that before and lost three men. Forty-five seconds left.”
“You could just attack the place!” Grace said.
“Another no-go. If we don’t find a way past the guard in the yard, we can’t get in. Thirty seconds!”
With quivering lips, Grace said, “You’ve got the three of us!”
“What good is that?” Zan asked.
“Three hostages,” she said. “You can threaten to kill us if they don’t give up their food to you.”
“That could work,” Zan said.
“Maybe or maybe not,” Nathan said. “If these guys are helping us, they might figure the three of them are better off dead than alive.”
Grace frantically shook her head. “Trust me, it will work. I promise you!”
“Time’s up,” Zan added.
Nathan paused, his gaze shifting from face to terrified face. Could they be trusted? Would this idea work? He didn’t know, but they needed a plan B. “Okay, guys. Let’s try this. We threaten to put a bullet into each of their heads if they don’t surrender every scrap of their food. But if this plan fails and we wind up with so much as one casualty, we will make good on that threat. Let’s go!”
The gang shouted and screamed their way out of the barn, pumping fists and waving rifles. Nathan turned with his finger on his lips. As the volume dropped, he pointed to the ground. The guys crouched and moved forward, slipping just below the level of the grass and creeping up slowly.
Nathan had to clamp his mouth shut to conceal his laughter. He loved where this was going.
THE RINGING of the perimeter bell brought the compound to immediate silence. Although he’d been told about it, Hatfield had never heard it before or been involved in a situation where it was deemed necessary. So he knew this was serious.
Within a fraction of a second, the scramble of feet against a hardwood floor soon replaced the quiet among the homesteaders. Orders were loudly shouted, and the clank of weaponry echoed everywhere.
He raced to the hallway, barely avoiding the stampede of the homesteaders on their way out. “Okay, guys!” Cecil yelled. “You know the formation. As we’re missing some guys, we’ll have to make adjustments, but we’ll make those on the fly. Just get out there the same way you would ordinarily. If you need to change body positions, you change body positions! Everybody got that?”
The answer was a collective “yes, sir!” that nearly rattled the floor. Lost in the maze of bodies, Hatfield wasn’t sure what to do. The captain headed toward him. “Trevor, I’m going to need you as my rover.”
“What’s that?”
“That means you rove around in the rear, acting in a backup capacity.”
“Cool, let me get a rifle—”
Cecil shook his head. “Your pistol still loaded?”
“Only two shots left.”
“Probably won’t need more than that. Let’s go!”
“Captain, you think it’s a good idea to go out with the same formation as usual—especially when these guys out there may know exactly what we’re up to?”
“Yes, I do. We don’t have time to get cute.”
“What I mean is, perhaps if we—”
“Mr. Hatfield, what the compound needs right now is not a contrarian but a leader. As long as I’m here, that’s my role! Is this understood?”
Choking back his objections, he answered, “Yes, perfectly.”
“Then let’s get out there and execute.”
With a nod, he waited for the guys to get into formation. But before getting there, two shots rang out, followed by pained yells.
During a barrage of profanity and scurrying bodies, Hatfield pulled out his pistol and crept toward the injured guys as they writhed in the grass, one clutching his elbow, the other, his foot. He grabbed one of them by the waist and started to drag him toward the compound. “No, no! I’ll be okay.”
“You sure?”
“It hurts like hell, but I can still shoot,” he hissed.
He screamed toward the one holding his foot. “How about you?”
With gritted teeth, the wounded homesteader glanced at the other who’d been injured. After a series of pained grunts, he said. “I guess if he can make it, I can make it.”
The silence beyond the fence caught Hatfield’s attention. A voice from thirty-five or forty yards soared through the sky. “Guns down, hands up! Now! Or you get more casualties. We’ve got way more men than you! And we have three more you may have forgotten about.”
As the gang moved forward, their advantage became all the more evident.
“If you expect us to surrender the compound, you are mistaken!” Cecil yelled. “We are prepared to fight to the finish, but we suspect you are not. Because you are a bunch of cowards!”
A smattering of chuckles fell across the gang. That was the sound of people who knew something Cecil didn’t. As the gang marched toward the fence, Hatfield spotted three familiar faces, all of them red and creased with fear. Gary, Andy, and Grace had guns to their temples as they were prompted forward. The leader moved to the front, then addressed the homesteaders. “I repeat, hands up, guns down.”
A tense pause, then Cecil groaned, “Do what he says, guys,” his voice defeated, passionless.
The homesteaders complied, slowly dropping their rifles to the grass, then reaching upward.
“So here’s the story,” the leader said. “We don’t want the compound. We want food and want it as soon as possible. If we don’t get it, these three are dead.”
Hatfield gazed at Cecil’s face, watching the life drain from it.
“This should not be a complicated decision,” he added. “But on the off chance that it is, we’ll give you some time. If I don’t get enough food for all of us to last a month, these three will die slow, horrible deaths. And trust me, we will enjoy that nearly as much as we enjoy food. Right, guys?”
The gang howled in delight.
He went on. “You’ve got twelve hours. If the food isn’t here by then, you’ve got a very big problem!” The gang backed up slowly, guns still raised, faces as stern as before.
Once they’d faded into the horizon, Cecil lifted a hand, then waved backward. When the guys all backpedaled to the compound, Hatfield understood this to mean “retreat.”
Stepping inside, tense, fragile faces greeted them. There were ten or twelve of them there, four women and roughly eight injured men. “What happened out there?” Jess asked.
“They made an offer,” Cecil said. “Food or have the blood of those VVs on our hands.”
Jess gasped. “You mean they’re going to kill them?”
“That’s correct,” Cecil said. “But I wonder what they’re really up to.”
“What do you mean?” A homesteader asked.
“I mean, the whole thing doesn’t make sense. If they wanted the compound, why not just take it? Or at least attempt to?”
“If I had to guess,” Hatfield said. “I’d say they just didn’t want to kill the golden goose. They want us alive and well so we can keep giving them food. Meanwhile, they can continue to ransack the neighborhood without having to do any of the heavy lifting or take care of the compound.”
“I don’t buy it,” the captain grunted. “With those three VVs, they shouldn’t be worried about running this place. Those three know the compound up and down. There’s a crack in their armor that is preventing them from attacking. And that is why we should go ahead and call their bluff.”