Jeff Brackett - Half Past Midnight

“Who?” I asked. “Who’s good? Was it Han?”

Eric swallowed slightly. “Yeah. Methhed me up inthide.”

“Why now? What made them do this now?”

“Ah tried ta get Zach out this mornin’. Kicked Larry’th ath, too.” Eric grinned for a second, then grimaced as the movement sent pain through his jaw. “Almoth’ made it out, bu’ Han caugh’d me. Be cayhful, Lee. He don’ feel nuttin’. No pain… nuttin’.”

“It’s all right, Eric. We’ll get him.”

Eric nodded. “Yeah, jutht don’ fight ’im.” He reached out his left hand blindly, and I took it in my own. “You get th’ chanthe, you thoot th’ bathtard.”

“You can count on it,” I told him.

I held his hand like that for a time while Megan cradled his head, until his hand finally lost its strength. As I lay his hand on his too-still chest, my emotions were so mixed up that I could hardly sort one from the other. In those last few minutes, I was almost surprised to find that I genuinely and completely forgave him. Once more, I found myself weeping over the loss of a friend and, as my daughter’s eyes met mine, I think she finally forgave me as well.

No one bothered us for the few minutes that we grieved, though we all knew that time was pressing. Finally though, I felt it was time to go. As hard as it was to leave Eric, there was a more impending matter. “Come on, Megan. Time to go get your brother.”

She nodded. “Just give me a minute alone with him?”

“Sure. I’ll be in the truck.” I walked away with a lump in my throat.

I didn’t make it far before a soft voice from behind stopped me. “Sensei?”

I sighed. “What, Sarah?”

“Ahmm, the others?”

“What?” I turned, confused.

She jerked her chin back at the men Larry had abandoned. “They want to know about their trade.” The men who had brought Eric to us in this condition.

“Trade?” I spun and growled, “What the hell do you want?” Running up to the nearest one, I grabbed him by the shirt and drew Brad’s dagger from my belt. “You march into our town! You kill our friends!” I jabbed the dagger at his throat, letting the tip break the skin. “Our families! Our neighbors! You destroy half the damned town!” I twisted the knife, and a bead of blood welled at the tip. “You steal my son!” His terror showed in the wide eyes that stared in shock at my reaction. “And now you have the balls to ask me for a trade?”

“Sensei!”

Sarah touched my hand, and I flinched away, withdrawing the dagger. I had nearly killed a helpless man. Worse yet, at that particular moment, I didn’t really care. I walked a few paces away to try to cool off and heard Sarah come up behind me again.

I closed my eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. When I felt calm enough to be halfway civil, I turned to her. “What do they want?”

“Tattoos.”

“What?”

“They heard about the slave tattoos from when Larry captured that foraging group a couple of months back. Seems they’ve decided they’d be better off as our slaves than fighting in Larry’s army.”

I thought about it for a while, then walked back to the bedraggled men standing around Eric and Megan. “You’re asking for tattoos? You know what that means?”

“Yes, sir,” a particularly rough-looking man at the far end of the line spoke up. “Some of the men who were part of the group that…” He hesitated. “That captured and tortured some of your slaves before… before the big fight, they told us about it.”

I walked over to stand in front of him. “So what does it mean?”

“It means we’re slaves for the town. Means we serve our time and, eventually, we get the chance to work our way out of it.”

“It means you would get a chance to live!” I hissed. “So what makes you think I should let you live?”

They looked at one another wildly. It had apparently never occurred to them that we might not allow them to become slaves. “But we brought you-” He stopped as he realized what he had brought us.

“You brought me another friend I had to watch die.”

I remembered an argument with Ken. He had wanted to kill a man, the last surviving member of the group who had killed his neighbors. I’d won that argument, and Billy had lived. And he’d gone on to become a fine person, even a friend. But now I knew firsthand what Ken had felt that day, the deep desire to punish someone, and the frustration of knowing it was not to be.

“All right,” I told them. “Assuming you don’t give us any trouble, and that you survive this trip, you’ll get your damned tattoos.”

I turned back to Sarah. “Tie them and put them in the back of a truck. If they so much as blink wrong, kill them where they stand.”

“Yes, Sensei.”

“There. In the brush to the right, just before the road curves. About twenty feet from the edge of the road.”

I searched closely where Rene indicated and saw nothing. “You sure you saw something?”

“Si. Keep watching.”

I had just about decided that the tension had finally gotten to her when the branches of the juniper swayed, and I finally discerned the camouflaged figure behind it. Once I saw what to watch for, I found several others in the area. “I see them. Looks like about a half dozen or so.”

“More on the other side,” Billy whispered from his perch on the limb above us.

I shifted the binoculars across the road. Sure enough, another group waited there. “Damn.” I sat down with my back against the pine I hid behind and rubbed my eyes. I was so tired I couldn’t see straight. I was tired of driving, tired of sneaking through the woods, but mostly I was tired of the fighting. And just down the road, it looked like Larry’s boys were settling in for one hell of a fight.

Time to review options. “Any ideas?”

Rene thought for a second, then shook her head. “Sorry, Jefe, I got nada.”

I sighed. “Go get Sarah and Megan,” I told her. “Tell them what we’ve got here, and I want all three of you to start thinking of some way around this situation. I want some ideas by the time you get them back here.” She slipped off through the woods to get the others. Damn it, Ken, why’d you have to go and get shot?

“Billy?”

“Yes, Sensei?”

“Think you can get around those jokers and see what else is down there?”

The young man nodded. “Easier done than said.”

“All right. Be back in an hour.”

“Yes, sir.” Billy started to slip away.

“Hey!”

“Yes, sir?”

“Make sure you don’t get your ass shot off.”

He grinned nervously. “That’s my number one priority.”

It was a long hour.

I jolted awake to the sound of soft scurrying from the trees behind me. “Sensei?”

I lowered my pistol. “Here,” I whispered back to Rene.

A few seconds later, she slipped up beside me, accompanied by Sarah and Megan. Sarah’s head swiveled around curiously. “Where’s Billy?”

“Scouting.”

I noticed her worried demeanor. Something going on there?

She saw me looking at her and immediately lost the expression. “Just curious,” she muttered.

I smiled. “He’ll be back any minute now.”