“Jedthus?”
“I don’t know, Omar. I ain’t seem him since the ruckus started.”
“How about Knox an’ them?”
“I think they’re all gone, Omar.”
There was a moment of silence. There was a bang from outside the car, then a sort of crunch from the radio, the sound of someone making a fast movement while holding the microphone.
“They’re starting to shoot at us, Omar,” the man said. “I think we may have to pull out.”
“Fuck that,” a third voice said, some distance from the mike. “I got bullets left.”
“I’ll leave it to you guys,” said Omar. “I’m putting a posse together here, but if you think you need to hightail it out of there, you do that.”
Run for it, you crackers, Nick thought. Run for it, and we’ll come for you.
“Warriors to the cars!” people were shouting.
Nick opened the car door, stuck his head out, and shouted, “Ready to move! If you’re ready, honk your horn!”
He hit the horn, twice. Other horns began to take up the chorus.
The passenger door opened suddenly. Nick looked up in surprise, heart pounding. A man of thirty or so slid into the passenger seat—Nick knew he was among the Warriors, but didn’t know his name. The man carried a big club and a large revolver, and there was a wild look in his eye.
“I’m ready, man,” he said. “Ready to bust caps on some coneheads.”
“Right,” Nick said.
There was a chorus of horns outside, which Nick hoped were Warriors signaling they were ready, and not people blowing horns out of sheer exuberance.
“Let’s go!” Nick bellowed out the door, and he put the car in reverse and began rolling it across the grass parking lot to the road. “Left and right!” he shouted. “Let’s go!” He shut the door and looked over his shoulder out the back window. Voices chattered on the radio, and Nick gathered that Omar, whoever he was, was having trouble assembling his scattered forces. Don’t worry, man, Nick thought, we’ll be coming to you.
Cars bumped onto the road and accelerated. They were heading for the two roadblocks north and south of the camp. The deputies at the roadblocks were armed with high-powered rifles that could kill at a distance, and Nick had reasoned that it was hopeless to shoot it out from the camp with that kind of firepower, not with the sorts of weapons that were likely to be liberated from the guards. Nick planned a vehicle assault, cars filled with Warriors charging the road-blocks to engage the deputies at close range, where the hunting rifles could be outgunned by pistols, shotguns, and if necessary clubs and knives. Crossing the intervening distance, against those powerful rifles, was desperate. But Nick had already committed the Warriors to death, whether the Warriors themselves realized it or not. Enough of them would get through to kill the deputies, and that was all that mattered.
“Goddamn,” Miles said over the radio. “They’re pullin’ out. They’re heading for us.”
“Clear out if you have to,” Omar said.
The sheriff’s car bounced as it backed onto the road. Nick swung the wheel, turned the car north, in the direction he hoped to help the camp inmates escape. He wanted that route to be open above all. There were already several cars ahead of him. Nick accelerated.
A lengthy series of shots rang out. Nick couldn’t tell who was shooting: the guards or the escapees. Brake lights flashed ahead as the line of cars checked their speed. Nick growled his frustration and tapped the brakes.
One car rammed the roadblock. Cars swerved to the verge of the road, came to a stop. People burst from them, carrying weapons. Then the energy seemed to go out of them—they straightened out of their fighting crouches, let their weapons hang by their sides.
Nick pulled to a stop, ran from the car, and found out why the others had lost interest. The deputies were already dead. One had been shot through the heart. The other had been hit in the midsection, crawled into the bar ditch, and bled to death.
Cudjo, Nick thought. Sitting in the woods with his deer rifle, picking off every deputy he could see. There were crashes of metal-on-metal, a furious roll of gunfire from the other roadblock. Nick straightened, nerves leaping. He’d gone the wrong way.
“Get their guns,” he said. “Get the ammunition. Bring their car.” By the time Nick got to the other roadblock, the fight was over. The driver of the first car to charge the roadblock had been killed by the rifles and his car spun off the road, but the second rammed the deputies’ car, giving them the choice of jumping into the open or being hit by their own vehicle. The third car in line had hit one of the exposed deputies, throwing him fifty feet. He was hit so hard that he was literally knocked out of his boots. His partner had been run down in the field by a mob and shot to death. He carried a loaded rifle and a loaded pistol, but had been so terrified that he’d forgot to fire either one of them.
Nick got out of his car amid the crowd of fighters. They were jumping up and down, waving their liberated weapons over their heads, howling their victory.
Nick wandered among them, stunned.
He’d won. He’d won.
“Miles,” the radio said. “Miles. What is your situation?” Nick looked at the car. He got in the car, picked up the microphone, pressed the button on it with his thumb. Tried to still the tremor in his hand.
“Miles is dead, cracker,” he said. “So are the others. What do you have to say to that, cracker?” There was a moment of stunned silence. “Who is that?” said a voice. A voice that wasn’t Omar’s. Nick felt his lips draw back in a savage snarl. “Jon C. Ruford, brigadier general, U.S. Army,” he said. It was the least he could do in tribute to his father. It was all he could do to avoid mentioning Sun Tzu.
“You think I don’t know about camps?” Nick said. “You think I don’t know how to turn people in camps into soldiers?”
There was a moment of stunned silence. Nick forced a graveyard laugh.
“We got your friends’ guns, cracker,” Nick said. “We got more guns than you do now. You come visit the camp, cracker, and we’ll make you real welcome.”
He put the mike back on its hook. Let them think we’ll stay here at the camp, he thought. Let them think we’re waiting for them.
Please.
Fifteen minutes after seven o’clock, we had another shock. This one was the most severe one we have yet had—the darkness returned, and the noise was remarkably loud. The first motions of the earth were similar to the preceding shocks, but before they ceased we rebounded up and down, and it was with difficulty we kept our seats. At this instant I expected a dreadful catastrophe—the uproar among the people strengthened the colouring of the picture—the screams and yells were heard at a great distance.
Jason spent the fight huddled beneath a cotton wagon with Arlette, Manon, and a half-dozen other refugees. His nerves leaped with every shot, every cry, every moan or scream. He was glad to leave this business to the grownups.
At the start, right after the earth shuddered to the detonation of the claymore mines, gunfire broke out all around the camp as Nick’s Samurai, with three handguns and one .22 rifle, opened fire on the six guards distributed around the back and sides of the camp. One guard was killed, another wounded, and a third fled unhurt. Two Samurai were killed when guards returned fire. Bullets sprayed the camp, whining eerily as they tumbled after striking parts of the chainlink fence.