Jeff Brackett - Half Past Midnight

Now he was really confused. “Wha-?”

It was the last thing he ever said. One of the main things I drilled into my students was that the human brain has about a half-second reaction time. In other words, if the brain was busy doing something else, it took that long to react to new stimulus. As soon as he opened his mouth to speak, Megan knew he was concentrating on something other than her. With the distraction she needed, she shifted her weight and twisted her head, swiftly bringing her left hand to grasp the thumb of his knife hand, pulling it over her left shoulder as her right hand slapped behind his elbow and drove the knife into his own throat.

His throat fountained scarlet, and he instinctively threw himself backward as Megan dove for the ground, but it was too late for him. One of the men closest made a grab at her, but missed. For a heart stopping moment, I saw every gun in the group shift toward us. Then Ken opened up with the machine gun, and I saw five of them die as they turned to face the new threat. The others dropped to the ground as I dove and yanked the smoke bomb off of my belt, leaving the retaining ring dangling from the pouch snap. As smoke began to billow out, I tossed it into the crowd. The smoke washed over them as they shot blindly into the brush from which Ken had fired. Megan and I belly-crawled away as quickly as possible, hidden now by the advertised “fifty thousand cubic feet of thick white smoke.” The minute we hit the trees, we scrambled to our feet and started running.

It would only take a few seconds for them to realize that Ken was no longer shooting at them. The plan had been for him to fire a quick burst, doing as much damage as possible, and then to leave the area before they could get a fix on his location. After that, he would follow my earlier route and meet us back on the trail.

Megan and I tore down the trail and rounded the first curve. I saw the carbine leaning against the tree where I had left it and grabbed it on the run. As we rounded the next curve, I grabbed Megan’s shoulder and pulled her off of the trail to the right, where we ran only a few yards through the brush before kneeling in some scrub to hide and pant for breath.

Handing her the pistol from my holster, I fumbled my belt pouch open to grab another smoke bomb. Then I swung my carbine up to cover the trail. “Ken should be along at any time,” I gasped. “Don’t shoot him.”

She didn’t waste her breath on an answer, just nodded. Sure enough, ten seconds later, Ken came trotting through the trees. He slipped quickly and silently through the trees and, as I watched him, I realized my newfound friend had some hidden facets. If I hadn’t known approximately where to watch, I probably would have missed him altogether. I whistled lightly to get his attention as he crossed the trail, and he veered over to squat next to us.

“Good to see you back with the good guys.” Ken reached out and gingerly touched her swollen cheek. “Looks like they popped you pretty good, though.”

She winced a little at his touch. “It’s all right,” she said. “He won’t pop anyone ever again.”

Ken nodded and turned to me. “Okay, now what?”

“You still think we can get all of them?” I was honestly beginning to doubt it.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But we can’t lead them back home.”

I worried about the same thing. We couldn’t lead them home. We couldn’t take them head on. Our only chance was to ambush them, and finding a way to do that now would be tough. They would be watching for us.

Megan complicated the situation with an observation. “What about Mrs. Robertson? We still have to get her out of there.”

Ken and I glanced at one another. In the heat of the battle, we had both forgotten Pat Robertson, still tied to a table in her backyard. “Let’s get them out here,” I said.

Ken shook his head. “We can’t take them on like this. There are at least eight of them left, and they’re all looking for us right now.”

“All I said was to get them out here.” I grinned. “I didn’t say we were going to wait on them. We fire a few shots to get their attention, get them moving down the trail, then circle back the way we came. Back to the house. You know the trails; they don’t.”

He thought for a moment. “Well, let’s get them out here.”

I smiled wearily. “Is there an echo around here?” I raised the carbine. “Everyone ready?”

When they nodded, I fired four or five shots into the air. Less than a minute later, we heard the sounds of a pack of inept woodsmen crackling through the brush. As soon as I saw movement, I tossed out two more of the smoke bombs and fired. I was out of effective range, but I wanted them to know exactly where we were before we were within range of their weapons. Some of them returned fire; others dove for cover. Within moments, smoke obscured everything. We turned and ran down the trail making enough noise for a blind man to follow. I stopped once to fire back into the smoke, and yelled, “Back to the house! Back to the house! Hurry!” We all turned abruptly to the right, ran about fifty yards, and dropped into the thickest briar patch we could find.

The smoke bombs burned for two more minutes before the cloud slowly began fading. It was difficult to see through the brush of our hiding place but, after a minute or two, we could hear the marauders cautiously moving past. For a second, I entertained the wild idea that it would be the perfect time to impetuously spring to our feet spewing bullets in all directions in a glorious attempt to take out the last of them at a single stroke. Unfortunately, I could tell from the sounds of their passage that they were much too spread out. They were all around us, whispering orders designed to “herd them back to their house.”

We would never be able to get them all. Though the wait was maddening, I sat silently in the briars with Megan and Ken, ignoring the multitude of scratches, bruises, and abrasions our nasty little game of hide and seek produced.

A few minutes later, when we were finally sure that they were past us, we raced back to the Robertson’s home. Ken reached the house first and rushed straight for the back porch.

“Damn! Damn them all!”

I rounded the corner of the house to find Ken kneeling next to the table to which Pat Robertson was tied. As I neared, I could see the bruised and bloody condition she was in. He looked up as Megan and I came toward him. “She’s dead.” Anguish lined his features as he spoke. Pain for the woman and her husband… for his neighbors, his friends. “The filthy animals beat her to death,” he sobbed.

I hesitated a moment, then walked over and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Ken? Ken, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, man. But we have to go.”

He was unresponsive, his grief overwhelming.

“Ken! I understand, but the others are still on that trail. We don’t have time for this.”

“What the hell do you mean, no time?” He slung my hand violently from his shoulder and stood. “Pat’s dead. John’s dead. We didn’t save anyone. All this,” his arm swept out to indicate the bodies littering the area, “was for nothing!” He stepped over to the nearest of the bodies and kicked it. I heard the distinct cracking sound of breaking ribs. He kicked it again and again, caving in an entire side of the corpse. The whole time we could hear him sobbing and saying, “All for nothing!”

The violence of Ken’s reaction startled me. I really didn’t know what to say to get through to him. I was about to try to reason with him when Megan stepped in.

“Where did the rest of them go, Ken?” She asked it quietly, simply, and somehow it got through to him. He stopped the destruction of the corpse and turned to face her, uncertainty on his face.