She shook her head.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
“You promised to marry me when you returned from deployment,” she said softly.
I shook my head. “What? Marry you?”
My words struck her like a slap to the face. She turned her head and opened her mouth, unwilling to look at me.
“You want to keep it down, boss?” Crefloe asked.
I nodded. “Got it. Just watch our six.” Then to Suzie I said, “Marry you? I have never once said that to you or any other woman on the planet. I don’t know what you’re talking about, Suzie. That never happened.”
“You never wrote. You never sent an email. It was as if you’d fallen off the face of the planet.”
“You said it was just a fling.”
“No, I answered your question with ‘Yes’.”
“What question?” My blood pressure shot through the top of my head. “Suzie,” I whispered harshly. “I never asked you to marry me. That never ever happened.”
She glanced at me as if I were a piece of gum on the ground she was about to step over, then looked away.
I stood and went to Crefloe so I could cool down. “How many?”
“I counted three men and two women. The women are never left alone. It could be nothing or it could be something.” He shrugged.
“Weapons?”
“Men have pistols. Two hunting rifles.” He glanced behind me. “You know, we really should be moving on.”
I nodded. “I know. But we can’t. I want you to get inside the barn and report to me.”
He looked at the hundreds of feet of open ground between here and the barn. “You have got to be kidding. They’ll see me right away.”
“That’s the idea.”
He did a double take.
“When they come after you, run to the wood line. I have a plan.”
“Can I return fire?”
“Only if you have to. This might all be for nothing”
Crefloe shook his head. “I heard that scream. That was not nothing.”
I guess me trying to find out how Suzie lost her arm drove her bat shit crazy. She wasn’t moving until I did something about the girl and somehow, in some alternate universe, she believed I’d asked her to marry me. I’d done some things to the girls of planet Earth to get into their pants that I’m not exactly proud of, but proposing marriage and running wasn’t one of them.
Crefloe and I had come up with a plan. We’d even involved Suzie, although I wasn’t sure if she’d be able to pull her part off. The plan wasn’t exactly complicated, but it did have some moving parts, so I’d have to make sure we were careful.
It was early afternoon. I’d have preferred it be darker, but I didn’t want to stick around here longer than we had to. As it was, I was only doing this to ameliorate Suzie’s needs.
Crefloe waited for my signal. I squelched my walkie and he began walking across the grass toward the barn. One foot in front of the other, easy as you please, as if he was out for a stroll. Just a guy with military grade weapons, a pack on his back, walkie on his belt with receiver-transmitter affixed to his chest, and dressed in black who means no harm. He could have been a militant Mormon marching up to a door in the days of yore or perhaps even a Seventh Day Adventist who was going to force his neighbors to convert at the point of a gun. He was anything but a decoy out to do lots of harm.
But I wasn’t watching him. I was watching the house. I was looking for the hand. And there it was, pulling aside the curtain. This time I saw the face — old, wrinkled, one side sagging from what had probably been a stroke. His mouth moved and ten seconds later the front door opened and two men poured out onto the porch. They both had hunting rifles.
One of the men brought his rifle up to his shoulder and I said, “Down,” into the walkie just as the man fired.
Crefloe had listened and now picked himself off the ground and began trotting toward the barn.
The other man lifted his rifle and prepared to fire.
“Down.”
This time Crefloe dove to his left.
The man fired and missed.
This wasn’t good. I was playing chicken with a human being.
Both men swore, leaped off the porch and began running toward the intruder.
Crefloe turned and ran straight for the wood line.
I watched as he juked and jived, diving and rolling to the safety of the trees. Our plan truly was a piece of magnificent shit. We should have just walked away or else gone in blasting but Suzie had thrown me so off with her crazed nonsense that I was having trouble thinking straight.
I eased myself out of the copse, glancing once at Suzie who was curled into a ball, sucking her thumb. Black Johnson’s words rang through me and I cursed myself for being too proud not to heed them. With the trees screening me from the house, I crouched and made it to the woods as well. I could hear the two men crashing through saplings and brush, eager to get to Crefloe. I squelched my walkie twice, then continued to move through the wood, careful of each footfall.
When I made it to the immense oak I’d seen earlier, I flattened myself on the other side. The tree had probably seen the rise and fall of Los Angeles, witnessing not only the first settlers in their wagons and from ships, but the invasion and placement of the hives, and the eventual destruction of them by me and the other team. It was as wide as two people, the bark rough like the ridges of the fingers of an ancient man.
Thirty seconds later, Crefloe ran past, limping extravagantly. He kept going about twenty meters, then stopped, edging himself mostly behind a tree, bent over, hands on knees, huffing and puffing.
The sounds of crashing drew closer. I flattened myself even more, becoming one with the tree. Making sure my elbows were in, I held my M4 against my chest, barrel straight up, my nose tickling the ACOG scope.
The men stopped behind my tree.
“Drop your weapons,” one shouted, pressing the barrel of his .306 along the left side of the tree, close enough for me to grasp it.
Another barrel pressed forward from the right and looked to be a .30–30 Winchester.
“Yeah. Throw ‘em down.”
Crefloe, who I could just make out, peered around his tree. “Can’t you just let me go? I wasn’t doing no harm.”
“How do we know that?” asked .30–30.
“What were you doing by our barn?” asked .306.
“Looking for someone so I could introduce myself.”
“He’s bullshitting us,” .306 whispered.
“Let’s hear him out,” .30–30 whispered back.
“I mean of course I was walking toward your barn,” Crefloe continued. “Wouldn’t it have been more suspicious had I been sneaking about?”
“He makes a good point,” whispered .306, “but I still feel like he’s bullshitting. Something’s not right here.”
“Your spidey senses are for shit, Amos.” Louder, 30–30 said, “Who are you and where are you from?”
“Crefloe Johnson. I’m from Mother’s Compound.”
After a few moments of silence, “That the one over on Big Cienaga?”
“Yes sir.”
“Why you contacting us now?”
“Wanted to reach out to you as an ambassador, so to speak. Heard about you all. Wanted to let you know that we’re at peace with you, so to speak.”
“Sounds reasonable,” .30–30 said, “but why did you run?”
“Because you were shooting at me. Listen, I’m not a bad guy. I’m a scrounger. I’m sure you have scroungers too. I know where things are that people might need. I can’t carry everything with me, so I just mark their locations and know that I can always return. I can be of help. If there’s something you need and I know where it is, I can go get it or tell you where it is — in the spirit of cooperation so to speak.”