"Christ, this wind will tear at us up there."
"I prefer the wind to whatever else might be in this forest," Slaughter said.
TEN
The wind persisted. Slaughter hunkered by some boulders on the ridge. The place was barren, just a razorback above the treeline. Here and there, mountain grass had caught hold, but the ground was mostly bare, and the men had either crouched among other boulders or else dragged dead trees onto the ridge and lay behind them, waiting, shaking from the cold.
Or so they told themselves that they were shaking from the cold. Hunched low to escape the wind, Slaughter was reminded of the cold in Detroit, of when he'd walked into that grocery store that winter night and found those two kids and been shot and how his world had changed. For the past five years, he'd lost his nerve. What puzzled him as he hunched waiting here now was that he wasn't afraid any longer. Oh, he was apprehensive. That was to be expected. But he wasn't frightened, and that puzzled him.
Pride, he guessed. Once his pride had started to grow, it had smothered his cowardice. Exactly when the pride had started, he didn't know. Perhaps when he had broken out of jail. Perhaps before that when he'd gone against what Parsons thought was best. Some moment in the past few days had been a turning point for him, and if this night would be his last, at least he knew that he would acquit himself with dignity. He wished his ex-wife could see him now, but then he realized that he was thinking too much. Memories like that were bad ones, and he shut them out and concentrated on the forest.
The night was thick, eerily so inasmuch as the sky was bright, the stars sharp, the moon an almost perfect brilliant circle, glowing coldly in the wind. The moon seemed extra large also, as if it had been magnified, and Slaughter felt its brooding power. Once he thought he heard a howl down in the woods, but in the shrieking wind he wasn't sure, and clutching to the woolen shirt that he'd taken from his knapsack and put on, he continued to study the forest.
Someone moved beside him. When he looked, he saw that it was Hammel, and he nodded, then redirected his gaze toward the trees below him.
"There's something I want to tell you," Hammel said.
"What is it?"
"That big speech you gave."
"I know. I'm embarrassed."
"No, listen. What you said about those hippies, about wanting to protect them… I admire you for standing up to Parsons."
Slaughter shrugged. "I watched a lot of kids get pushed around back in Detroit, and this is one place where it isn't going to happen. I don't care how sick those things up there might be, we're not about to kill them unless we're forced to. They once were people, still are if we find a way to help them, and I mean to try my best to do that." Slaughter shook his head. "I've seen enough hate. Some of it I felt against myself. I think it's time this town looked ahead instead of backward."
"Unless they come for us."
No reply.
"Slaughter?"
He was silent, staring toward the forest, and he groaned then.
"What's the matter?"
"Something hit me."
He rubbed his shoulder.
Something cracked against the boulder next to him. Something whipped hard past his head.
"It's stones."
"Get down! They're throwing stones!" a man nearby him shouted.
Slaughter winced and crouched low by the boulder, but the stones kept falling, pelting all around him. He held up an arm to shield his head. He heard the men around him shouting and felt the rocks crack down upon him.
"Well, it looks like they don't feel the same as you do, Slaughter. We'll soon have to fight."
"But there's a difference."
"I don't see it."
"We're not looking for a fight. They're forcing us. This town's getting back what it gave out. They called these hippies 'animals,' and now their words have turned to fact and with a vengeance."
Slaughter gripped his rifle, and the stones abruptly stopped. He swung toward Hammel, puzzled.
"Hear it?" '
Even in the wind, he couldn't help but hear it. Far off in the woods, Slaughter heard the howling. He saw the flash. He heard the blast. It came from a ridge above him, a massive fireball blossoming into the darkness. "The helicopter. That's where we left the helicopter."
Whump, whump, whump. In the opposite direction, the valley exploded. Whump, whump, whump. Pivoting, staring down, Slaughter saw more fireballs, dozens of them, the valley reminding him of a battlefield. Even at a distance, he felt the Shockwaves.
"The Jeeps! The trucks!" a man nearby him shouted.
"They set fire to them!"
"The gas tanks!"
Whump, whump, whump, a steady sequence of explosions, mushrooming fireballs lighting up the night, and Slaughter, even with the ridges that obscured his vision, sensed the wider blaze, the parched mountain grass now burning, and he turned to peer upward toward the blaze from the helicopter again, shocked to see how far and fast those flames were spreading, torching trees and bushes, becoming a fire storm.
"The wind. It's fanning everything."
The blaze consumed the upper ridge, illuminating the faces of the men, revealing the rocks and ground quite clearly.
"We're a target now."
Even as Slaughter said that, more rocks pelted on them.
"Get down!"
"It's the wind. The wind will push the fire toward us. It'll sweep down across this ridge to reach the other trees and scorch us."
Slaughter clutched his injured shoulder, dropping. Men were screaming, shouting. In the lowland, burning mountain grass had led up to the underbrush and then the trees. The hills below were all ablaze now. And the howling was around them, and the rocks kept pelting them. Now the roar of flames blended with that of the wind, and Slaughter struggled to his feet to scan the slope above and behind him, where the blaze was tree-high, looming toward them.
When the next rock struck him, Slaughter made his choice. Some of the men were shooting toward the bottom of the ridge.
"Stop it!" he shouted. "You can't see your targets. There's no chance. We have to get away from here."
The flames below them roared closer.
"Everybody get over here! We have to move along this ridge, stay away from that ridge"-Slaughter pointed toward the burning slope above them-"and get around the fire to higher cover!"
No one listened. They were shooting, screaming as more rocks struck all around them. Slaughter glanced frantically from the flames on the upper ridge toward the burning lowland on his opposite side. He could see hills for miles around now.
"Let's get started! Help!" he blurted to Hammel, then scrambled toward Dunlap, Lucas, Parsons, anybody. "Get these men to follow me. We have to work along the ridge, away from these flames, toward higher cover."
A rock struck Slaughter's back. Another walloped his thigh. Ignoring the pain, he pointed toward a dry streambed that veered upward away from the fire. He shouted more instructions as rocks hailed all around him, and from above, he felt the scorching heat approach the ridge. "Get moving!"
It likely wasn't so much what he said as what they sensed. They couldn't stay here. They were shooting less. They glanced around. They stared down at the fire. The rocks were hurtling toward them, and the blaze in the lowland kept getting wider, brighter, stronger. There wasn't any sense in running toward it. They were forced to move along the angle of the razorback toward the dry streambed that Slaughter had noticed and that would lead them away from the fires up toward the rockwall.
"Let's do it!"
Frantic, they started. Slaughter didn't realize until later that the route they followed had been calculated for them, that they had been pushed in one direction and were headed for a trap. But no one else took the time to figure it either. All they knew was that they had to get away, and they were shouldering their knapsacks, grabbing rifles, stumbling across the boulders up the razorback toward the streambed and the rockwall, their silhouettes made vivid by the flames below them, easy targets as the rocks kept coming.