Steven Konkoly - Event Horizon

Kate looked over her shoulder at the eastern tree line. “You don’t think—”

“We scoured the eastern woods,” he said, shaking his head. “No sign of the shooter.”

“They’re gone, honey. They lost twenty-nine men. You don’t come back after that.”

Instead of agreeing with her, he reached out and plucked the porch screen.

“We won’t be able to sit out here at night. Mosquitos will eat us alive.”

She sensed he was holding back. Alex usually played the role of cheerleader.

“We have rolls of screen in the basement. We can pop this stuff out and replace it. Same with the slider. We’ll have to board up one side, but it’ll work,” she said.

“Then there’s the rain. Almost every window in the house is broken, and of course, these are custom windows.”

“We’ll be fine. We can cut enough plywood to cover the windows. We prepared for this possibility. It’s not ideal, but it’ll have to work for now.”

“One rainstorm and all of the insulation will get soaked. We’ll be living in a mold experiment by the end of September. This house was so perfect,” he hissed, crumpling his cup.

Kate had never seen Alex like this and wondered if it had something to do with the amphetamine tablets. His hands looked steadier, but they still shook while he held onto the cup of water. This was something bigger. Something he didn’t want to tell her.

“It’s still perfect,” she said. “The kids are fine. Your parents are fine. We have everything we need to thrive here. It’ll take time, but we’ll eventually patch up every single hole in this house.”

Alex sipped his water and stared at the lake beyond the trees.

“What’s going on?” she said, grasping his hand on the table.

“I don’t think we can stay here,” he said, slowly shifting his gaze to her.

His eyes looked distant, almost vacant, which terrified her.

“Honey, you’re starting to scare me.”

“I just scraped chunks of internal organs off the walls inside our house. The bloodstains will never come out, as far as I can tell. I’ve tried scrubbing with bleach. We’ll have to sand the spots and repaint them,” he said softly.

“Then we’ll sand them tomorrow,” she said, searching for something in his eyes.

They softened for a moment, watering.

“Ryan’s helmet had two rips in the fabric covering, one right above his left eye. Without the helmet… I couldn’t clean that up.”

“What aren’t you telling me?” she said.

His eyes sharpened. “There’s a reason I wanted to take the marines to Parsonsfield this morning,” Alex said carefully. “I don’t think this Eli Russell character will ever leave us alone.”

“We already agreed on a strategy to handle him.”

“I didn’t want to tell you this earlier, because I didn’t want to start a panic, and I didn’t want to leave you alone here with the kids. The attack this morning is connected to Milton Mills. I killed Eli Russell’s brother on that bridge.”

“This Russell guy is in charge of the Maine Liberty Militia?”

He nodded. “I killed his brother, and apparently, you killed his nephew in Waterboro. He’s never going to stop, and worse yet, he’s somehow convinced his whole gang of shitheads that we’re some kind of Homeland Security-sponsored, covert operations team. Part of the government’s false-flag operation. He’s using this story to recruit people for his militia.”

Alex’s revelation changed everything. No wonder he had been reluctant to let the kids out of the basement. It had nothing to do with the blood on the walls or the stifling heat. He didn’t think they were safe here.

“So, what do we do? Pack up as much as we can and go back to Durham Road until the military deals with Russell?”

“If we leave the area, I don’t think this place will be here when we get back. We have one option as I see it. We could move everyone to Sanford Airport—temporarily. I’m supposed to secure hangar space for the rest of the battalion tomorrow, and Grady said we could grab extra space.”

Kate stared at him in complete disbelief. Now he was driving around the state for Grady?

“What are you doing in Sanford?”

“Maine is about to be designated as a Regional Recovery Zone and—”

“Yeah, I get all of that. I thought you were putting together reports for Grady. Now you’re making trips to Sanford? When were you planning on telling me?”

“This is the first chance we’ve had to sit down and talk since this morning. I think we can make this work,” he said.

“I can’t see how. The idea of living in a hangar doesn’t sound appealing. Better than dead, but there has to be another solution.”

“Just until Russell is put out of business. The airport will have tight security, and we’ll have a battalion of marines around us. I can billet a squad here to keep an eye on the place, so it’s here when we come back. Part of a forward operating base or something like that.”

“Why don’t you just make this a forward operating base now, and we stay?”

Alex smiled. “I might be able to sell that to Grady. Russell won’t move his militia’s base of operations south. It’s too risky. He’ll head north, but not too far away. Keeping a full squad or platoon of marines here as a quick-reaction force makes sense. If Grady doesn’t agree, we’re back to square one.”

“Then we reinforce the defenses we already have with Staff Sergeant Evans and his men,” said Kate.

“Our fallback plan can’t include the marines. Grady could yank them out of here tomorrow depending on his needs.”

“I don’t think he’d do that to you.”

“He’s running a marine infantry battalion, not a babysitting service. Judging by the scope of operations planned for southern Maine, Grady’s going to need every marine in the inventory to do his job. We can’t count on any organic support at the house. If he doesn’t buy the forward base idea and pulls the marines out of here, the best we can hope for is a thirty-minute response time for reinforcement—if available.”

“That’s too long,” she said.

“I agree. We need to make a decision on this within the next day or so. Space to house civilians at the airport will vanish quickly once the recovery zone is officially designated.”

“Can we defend this place without the marines?” Kate asked.

She didn’t think so, not with three out of their seven riflemen limited to static positions by their injuries and one out of commission. Charlie, Linda and Ryan could take up their same positions on the second floor, but they’d require assistance to switch windows. Ed’s injuries put him in a different category. They could lay him in the basement to watch over the kids, but that might be the extent of his usefulness in a battle. Putting a rifle in Samantha’s hands didn’t help their overall defensive posture. Asking her for more than a few shotgun blasts in the general direction of the enemy was pushing it.

“With a working thirty-caliber machine gun and seven hundred fifty rounds? It depends on what they throw at us. Same as this morning, I’d say no problem, even with half of our crew injured. If they add a few more .308 rifles to the mix and stick to the trees?” he said, shaking his head. “I’m not so optimistic.”

“The machine gun works?”

“As far as I can tell. Evans plans to test fire it a little later. We also need to fix the gates, or at least harden them to SUV-sized vehicles. If they drive up on us too fast, in large enough numbers, who knows?”

“We’d have some warning, at least,” she said.

“Not until we unscrew the sensor situation. The two damaged transceivers correspond to the eastern approach, which means we have a huge gap in our coverage along Gelder Pond Lane and the gate. We should probably do that before dark.”