The junkyard floodlights came on, and Hugh froze midstride across a crushed car, nearly blinded. The men must have found the switch in the garage. Hugh hadn’t used them or even thought about them in forever; they took up too much of the battery reserve.
Shouts filled the air, followed by gunshots and Hugh reflexively crouched, expecting bullets. But the sounds were moving away from him.
He stayed low and climbed higher, watching for pursuit. He spotted men with rifles running back toward the trailer home, and then there were muzzle flashes from beyond, out where the trucks were parked. He heard the reports from the gunshots a moment later and searchlights, white ones this time, came on from the vehicles.
Prisoners, hobbled in their shackles, were trying to escape out into the prairie. A spotlight found one and stayed on him until a shot rang out and the man went down, shot in the back. The spotlight swung wide and searched for another. When the light found a prisoner, the hobbled man froze and threw his hands up into the air in surrender.
A bullet tore through his back before he could turn around.
Hugh grit his teeth, his soul becoming a black acid pit. He didn’t know who these men were, but they’d invaded his home and shot him first, and he couldn’t stand by and watch them murder any more people.
He unslung the .30-06 and brought it around to shoot. The scope was smashed, useless. Worse, it prevented him from sighting down the barrel. Holding the rifle between his knees, he tried to work the damaged scope off with his good hand.
Another gunshot rang out, and Hugh looked up to see the spotlight on another man who was already face down in the dirt.
Hugh slapped at the scope, trying to break it off, but it was solid. He gave up and raised the rifle, trying to see if he could even guess how to aim around it. Before he could find a target, a hissing sound flew by his head, quickly followed by the distant report of the shot. He spotted the man standing on the blue steps to the trailer pointing a rifle up at him. The muzzle flashed and Hugh threw himself down into the shadows cast by the wooden ramp.
A bullet cracked into the metal somewhere near him, sending a small shockwave through the crushed car. He couldn’t see the gunman anymore, but he couldn’t stay hidden here either. Another bullet hit. Voices shouted. Footsteps moved toward him.
Hugh looked out at the top of the fence, brightly lit in the flood lights. It was three feet away and, if he stood, it was at head height. He could make that. If he hadn’t been shot in the arm. If they didn’t already know where he was. If it weren’t lit up.
If it weren’t lit up.
Hugh turned to his wristphone, ignoring the suggestion to call for help, and opened the home app again. Another bullet hit. A voice, the words clear now, called out, “I’ve got him pinned down!”
Footfalls came quickly, closing in.
Hugh found the light controls and shut the floodlights off.
Even as the bright lights still faded, he jumped up and scrambled higher up the cars. Someone else’s feet hit the bottom wooden ramp, the sounds like pistol shots into Hugh’s heart. There was no way he was going to outrun them. Even if he jumped the fence, they’d still be right on top of him now.
But what if he didn’t jump the fence?
With a grunt of pain, Hugh tossed the worthless .30-06 out into the dark, as far out over the fence as he could. It landed with a satisfying thud and bounce, and the footfalls behind him stopped. Holding his breath, and trying not to make a sound, Hugh tossed the binoculars after the rifle. The sound of it hitting was quieter, but farther away.
“He jumped the fence!”
A metallic clanging filled the night, and, as Hugh’s eyes finally began to re-adjust to the dark, he spotted a man going over the top of the chain-link fence.
A small flashlight flickered on, and the man waved the beam back and forth until it landed on the rifle. “He went this way,” the man said quietly. “I need infrared over here.”
Hugh, crouched down and trying not to so much as breathe, assumed the man was speaking into a microphone.
After a moment, the man spoke again, saying “Roger that,” and then turned off his light and squatted down in the dirt.
Quick footsteps approached from within the junkyard and then stopped at what Hugh figured was the fence line. “You climb this, Ty-man?”
“Like a monkey. Hurry up, he’s got a lead on us by now.”
“Screw that. Ain’t climbin’ no fence.”
Clipping sounds filled the night.
“You takin’ the time to cut the damned fence, Junior?”
“You want help or not?”
The noises stopped and a second figure appeared outside the fence, walking toward the squatting man. “I can’t believe Sunflower shot that guy.”
“They don’t call him Mr. Happy for nothing.”
“Yeah, but there ain’t no way we’re headed back to Texas without a full load again. That’s gonna add another couple of days to find another conscript at least. By the way, what’s all the shootin’ back there? Family in the house?”
“You don’t want to know. Come on. Which way?”
The little light snapped on again and fell right on the binoculars. “I’d say that way, but it’s gonna be hard in the dark.”
“The others will be here in a minute.”
Hugh watched the two figures move out into the darkness of the night, following their tiny beam of light.
Another gunshot sounded from the other side of the junkyard.
Quietly moving farther up the pile, hoping to get as far away from where they were looking for him as possible, Hugh’s mind worked over the word he’d heard the man say: conscript.
He’d never heard that word before, but he’d read it. Recently. That story about a press gang apparently hadn’t been a load of shit after all. These men were kidnapping people to force them into the New Texas Army—and killing them at the drop of a hat instead.
The white spotlights in the distance seemed small and far away as they speared out from the trucks and into the darkness looking for another enslaved man to kill, but they felt like hot irons burning across Hugh’s soul. There was nothing he could do to help those men. There wasn’t even anything he could do to help himself.
He risked a glance at his wristphone to see if anyone was near him. The red dots were all outside of the junkyard. Two on this side and five on the other. Gray dots had appeared where men had died, six of them. Hugh didn’t know if that meant there were still three survivors, or if they had died outside the security system’s reach.
CALL FOR HELP? flashed across the screen.
Hugh wished he could. There wasn’t anyone out here. No one who would respond. And if someone actually did, it wouldn’t be for a day or two. Or three. Maybe they’d just come to see if there was anything to salvage for a couple of bucks. There wasn’t anyone to call.
He reached the convertible as that thought still echoed through his skull.
There was only one thing out here Hugh was capable of calling anymore.
He looked down at the steering wheel, barely visible in the gloom, and then back out to the spotlights searching for men in the prairie. There was a good chance he wouldn’t survive this night, but maybe he could help one of those last three men get away. And, if they did, maybe they could warn others that it hadn’t just been a click-bait story, that people had to be careful and protect themselves, protect their families from this new threat.
Hugh looked up to the sky and wondered what his own family would think of him now, and how long it would be until he saw them. Then he honked the horn three times.