After five or six minutes of silence, a gangbanger stepped into the room with a few plates of food. He tossed it to the center of the table. “Eat up, you losers!” he said with a cackle. On the plates was a few pieces of roasted chicken, a few baked beans thrown over it.
A few reached forward and took some food, then returned it to the center. One of them asked, “Anybody seen what happened to Taylor?”
No answer.
The image saddened Hatfield. He recalled a time when there were enough homesteaders to require two or three seatings in the dining room for a meal. Now there were slightly more than could be seated at a time. He counted everyone. Including his family, there were fourteen left. Then he realized Cecil would have made the count fifteen. Panic came over him. “Anybody seen Cecil?”
“That’s him in the bathroom,” Jess said. “Poor man. I’m really concerned about him.”
Minutes later, the captain hobbled out of the bathroom, and Hatfield stepped over, catching just after leaving.
“You doing okay, Cecil?”
The big man grimaced, choking back pain. “Things are getting a little rough on the belly, but you know me. It’ll take more than a little indigestion to bring this ornery SOB down.
From behind, Jess charged forward and said, “Captain Payne, I don't know how to tell you this, but I get the feeling this could be something more serious than indigestion.”
He held up a hand. “Whatever it is, this too shall pass.” With a cautious glance around, he lowered his voice. “Besides, at this point in time, my focus shouldn’t be on matters related to my health. I need to be concerned with getting us out of this.”
“If that’s possible,” Hatfield added.
“This isn’t the time for ifs, Hatfield. This situation we’re living under cannot hold. We cannot accept it under any—” A pained clutch at his stomach interrupted his words. He doubled over, his face folded with agonized wrinkles.
“Oh, my God!” Jess cried.
“Captain, are you sure you’re going to—”
From behind, a commanding baritone called, “Perhaps if the three of you aren’t in the mood for eating, you might want to step back outside to get some work done.” They turned and saw a gangbanger, big and bearded, tattooed like a biker.
“The man is in pain!” Jess shouted.
“Who cares? The three of you come out to the backyard now!”
With the captain still bent at the waist, they went to the backyard and had shovels tossed to them. As with Hatfield earlier, their task was to dig and not stop until told to.
The man left in charge leaned against the wall, his detached, loopy demeanor hinting that he was high on something and not able to fully pay attention.
Sensing that, Hatfield carefully stood next to his wife and the captain, keeping his voice low. “I’m going to make a run for Jade’s bunker to try to get some medicine for you.”
Between coughs, Cecil asked, “What’s… the plan?”
“Simple. I wait for that guard to doze off, then split, come back with the medicine, and give it to you.”
The captain shook his head. “Too much risk. You come back with those pills on you, then try to find a discreet place to give it to me. No, it wouldn’t work.”
“What other option do we have?”
“I’ll go alone, come back alone. Whatever I need to take, I’ll take there at the bunker. So I come back with nothing on me. Worst-case scenario, I just slipped out for a second for some fresh air.”
“No,” Hatfield said. “One man alone is too risky.”
“You were planning to go alone!”
“One healthy man is different. I insist on going with you—just in case.”
Cecil sighed. “If you insist.”
“Yes, I do. We’ll wait till the guard’s head down, and his eyes are shut, then make a run for it.”
The captain tried to reply, but coughing halted his words. He spat on the ground below.
Aghast at the black bile that landed at his feet, Jess said, “My God, how long has that been happening?”
“What, the coughing?”
“No, that color! Cecil, this is serious, you really need to—”
But she had raised her voice a little much and attracted the attention of the gangbanger. “You are here to work, not talk,” he said, his voice calm but sharp. “That is your last warning. Next time, I have this for you.” He lifted his gun into the air.
The three of them nodded. “We’re very sorry, sir,” Jess said. “It’s just that he’s dealing with a medical emergency and—”
The gangbanger shook his head slowly. “I thought I made it clear that we’re not here to play doctor for anybody. He could drop here and now for all I care.” He walked away, leaving Cecil, Hatfield, and his wife in compliant silence.
27
It seemed to take forever for nighttime to arrive. But in the end, Hatfield and Cecil were patient. They had more digging to do in the garden, so they did just that and waited, keeping their eye on the area where the guard was.
The good news was that it was the same as before on duty. The bad news was that he seemed more well-rested than before. Fortunately, that wasn’t true of all the others. Within three or four hours of nightfall, nobody else was up except the three of them. The guard, the captain, and Hatfield.
After another hour of digging, they could see the man’s head starting to bob, his eyes occasionally closing then opening again. Cecil whispered to his second-in-command, “I believe he is only up for our sake. Perhaps if we give the impression that we’re no longer around, he’ll feel comfortable going to sleep.”
Hatfield nodded, then the two of them drifted off to the side, peering back to the gangbanger every five minutes or so. After a while, he was out, and the two men jumped the fence and took off, making no sound except for the odd cough coming from the older man.
They both looked back to see the guard stir awake a little, then turned back and launched into a full-on sprint.
But Cecil struggled. The coughing began a few strides in and made it impossible for him to keep up. Hatfield turned and spotted the guard leaping over the fence, fifty, maybe sixty yards behind them. The two of them ducked behind a pile of rubble. “Come on, Captain! You can do it!”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” he said, waving the younger man on. “You go on ahead without me.”
“Are you crazy? You’re the reason I’m going to trade food for the medicine in the first place.”
Cecil shook his head. “It’s me now, but it’ll be somebody else who needs it later—and why waste medicine on somebody who’s not going to make it anyway. Besides, Jade and her family will need the food. Go on without me!”
Behind them, the bell sounded, signaling that there would soon be a whole cavalry after them. Hatfield pulled out his gun. “We may go down, but we don’t go down without a fight.”
“Dammit, Hatfield, are you that stupid! Don’t you see what I’m doing here?”
“What do you mean?”
“This is a kamikaze mission, man! I’m here to act as a decoy for you!”
The words stunned him, left him nearly speechless. “Why?”
“Because if these people are going to get from under the grip of these animals, they will need a leader! A leader not on his deathbed! Now get out of here! That is an order!”
With the gangbangers charging in from behind, Hatfield tried to take one more look back before racing away. But even that was cut short by the big man waving him away, his face as wrinkled by annoyance as pain.
With no other choice, he turned and ran. He didn’t have much of a head start, but Cecil would make sure he had a bigger one. As he sped away like the wind, Hatfield felt himself swimming in too many emotions at once. Sadness, fear, rage. But also gratitude. He’d find a way to make sure the captain didn’t die in vain. It was the very least he could do.