Jeff Brackett - Half Past Midnight

“Lord,” I whispered, comparing this crowd to the density of people I had seen back at Amber’s home. A rough estimate placed the majority of Rejas’s citizens in the stadium, either on the football field or in the bleachers. They were well-guarded with a number of Larry’s boys, armed to the teeth, placed around the perimeter.

“Now what?” Rene’s voice came from behind me. I turned and saw her form illuminated in the ghostly green of low light amplification. I reached up and turned off my goggles.

“Hell if I know.” I blinked for a moment against the darkness. “Anyone have any bright ideas?”

“Check with the other groups,” Billy suggested.

I nodded. “Sounds like a plan. Maybe someone else will have a suggestion.”

I pulled out the radio and keyed the transceiver. “Dawcett here… anyone listening?”

A second later, Eric answered, “I’m here, Lee.”

Mark chimed in. “What’ve you got?”

“I’m just across from the stadium,” I responded. “Looks like they’re keeping all our people here. They’re turning the place into a concentration camp. There’s no way we can get to the supplies without creating a stir.”

Ken’s voice surprised me. “Can you get any of our people out without any major risk?”

Just hearing his voice made me feel a little better. I had expected to have to make this decision on my own. “Man, am I glad to hear from you. I thought you didn’t have a radio.”

“I didn’t. We ran across a couple of Larry’s men that won’t be needing theirs any more.”

“Understood.”

“So, can you get anyone out?”

“We could probably get most of them out, if we could get everyone to work together, all at the same time. But we would probably lose a lot of people doing it. There’s about thirty guards scattered around.”

Sarah cursed and whipped off her goggles. She dropped rapidly to a sitting position beneath the window sill and rubbed her eyes. “Better take a look down the street to the west. And turn off your goggles if you don’t want to be blinded.” She looked directly at me, so I could tell she hadn’t suffered any serious eye damage.

“Hang on, Ken. Something’s happening.”

I slipped up to her window and peeked out.

“Um, Ken?”

“What is it, Lee?”

“Things just got a little more complicated.” I watched one of Larry’s M1’s, a single spotlight mounted on front, trundling up the street toward the stadium.

“Where exactly are the supplies?” Sarah whispered excitedly. I could tell that she had thought of something, but I also knew we were about out of time.

I shook my head. “They’re in the storage room behind the concession stand. We’d never make it without being seen.”

I turned my attention back to the radio. “Ken, one of the tanks is on its way here.”

“Damn!” It was silent for a moment. Then he came back on, sounding resigned. “Okay, Leeland, get out of there.”

I hesitated. I knew there was no way for us to get in without a fight and, with that tank coming toward us, there was no way we could win that fight. Still, I racked my brain, trying to think of an alternative.

“We need those supplies, Ken!” But it wasn’t the supplies I was worried about, and we both knew it. I was pleading with him. Come up with something, I thought fiercely at him. Pull that rabbit out of the hat again!

“Not now, Lee. We’ll have to find a way in later.”

“C’mon, Ken, we can’t just leave these people here. There must be something we can do.”

But I knew better. So did Ken. “Leeland, you’ve got to get out of there. You can’t win against that Abrams.” I turned to the four faces around me.

“I know it’s hard,” Ken continued, “but we all knew it could happen.”

They would follow my lead. I could see that.

“You have to leave.” Ken’s voice again.

I didn’t answer right away, thinking through my options.

“Leeland? You hear me?”

If I decided to fight it out, they would stick by me, no questions asked.

“Leeland?”

Ironically, it was that realization that decided me.

“Leeland, you have to abort!”

I couldn’t lead them into a no-win situation.

“Leeland, abort your mission! You made me take command of this thing, now you’d better take my goddamned orders! You hear me?”

I stared at the radio as if it were something foreign.

“Leeland!”

I slowly raised it back up to my mouth and keyed the mike once more. “I hear you, Ken,” I said quietly. “You’re right.”

None of the others questioned me. They knew what was at stake. “We’re aborting.” I felt numb as I released the transmitter.

I noticed my hands shaking and took a deep breath to help steady them, then looked at the rest of the group. “Let’s go home.” One by one, we slipped out of the warehouse.

Sarah, once more taking the point position, was first out the door. Gene followed, then Rene and Billy. I took up the rear again. It wasn’t until we were five blocks away that Gene noticed Sarah had disappeared. He passed the word back down the line, and I got a sudden sinking feeling in my gut, remembering the excitement in her voice when she had asked where the supplies were. I feared I might know what was going through her head.

Flagging the others down, I gathered them around me. “I have to go back and stop Sarah before she does something stupid. The rest of you get out to the fertilizer plant. Try to link up with the other groups if you can.”

I handed Billy the radio. “Wait until you’re out of town and in the trees. Then call for everyone’s status. Find out where the closest group is and try to get to them. Wait a bit, though.” I sighed. “Ken’ll know something’s up when he hears your voice instead of mine, and I don’t want to give him a stroke just yet.”

“You want me to come with you?”

I shook my head. “We started out with five in this group. It’s bad enough that I’m just sending three of you back. I can just imagine what Ken will say when you tell him what’s going on with me and Sarah.”

Billy frowned. “Just when I’d gotten him to think of me as a person.”

I squeezed his shoulder. “That won’t change.” I grinned a little. “What he’ll think of me is another thing altogether.”

Billy smiled a bit.

“Go on, kid.”

He nodded and joined Rene and Gene. Together, the three of them disappeared into the darkness.

“Here we go again,” I thought, once more slipping through the shadows of Rejas. It took only a few minutes to retrace the route we had taken from the warehouse. Slipping inside, I looked around for Sarah. “Sarah?” I whispered. No response. I hadn’t really expected any.

I peered through the window again. The tank sat just outside the main entrance to the stadium. The hatches were open, and the spotlight shone on the street before the armored monster. Someone had rewired an old CD player and hooked it into the tank. An unknown rap group proclaimed their philosophy in barely intelligible English to a deafening thunder of bass.

“Beat yo’ woman ’til she scream, ’cause you know the bitch, she live fo’ it.”

Dozens of uniformed men thrashed and gyrated in the circle of light before the tank. Someone had found some booze, and most of them had a bottle of their preferred poison in hand. Several of the guards were milling around, joking with the tank’s crew and smoking. I wondered where they had found cigarettes, and just how desperate you had to be to smoke two-year-old tobacco. The scent of marijuana reached me about the time that I noticed the cigarettes were all hand rolled. Tobacco was a thing of the past around here, as the local climate wasn’t conducive to its growth. Cannabis was apparently not as selective in its climate.