John O'Brien - Taken

Shouldering my M-4, I step into her cupped hands and lift myself up. Straddling the fence, I lie across it to minimize my silhouette.

“Geez, Jack. Have you been eating everything that isn’t nailed down?”

I take Lynn’s 110 and loop it over one of the wooden fence posts as she shoulders her M-4. We lock hands to elbows and I lift as she pulls. She is over the fence in a short time. She grabs her M-110, shoulders it, and cradles her M-4 as I drop to the ground. We enter a backyard and scan the house we so rudely intruded upon. Nothing moves. The red swing set sits still, reminiscent of better times. The laughter of kids playing should be filling this yard but it is now only filled with memories. An inflatable pool is empty with one side deflated as if mimicking this new world. Scattered toys lie where they were last played with and forgotten.

A faint, rotten smell wafts through the back yard. We move to the side fence that opens to the street in front. It’s a shorter version of the wooden fence surrounding the rest of the yard. Pressed against the house, I look out from the corner. A street stretches straight ahead with similar houses lining it. A couple of streets branch off to the sides. The main street ends in a cul-de-sac in front of the house we are at and terminates at another main street in the distance; a red stop sign indicating its end.

“It looks clear. We’ll take opposite sides of the street and do a bounding cover advance up the street; two houses at a time,” I say. “I’ll go first on the right.”

Being on opposite sides of the street will give us better and wider views of the area and allow us to see things from different angles. I don’t think anyone is still around given the nature of the neighbors to the south but better safe than sorry.

“Okay, Jack, let’s do this,” Lynn replies.

I open the small gate and step out, keeping to the front of the houses as I make my way around the cul-de-sac. I come to rest by the corner of the second house and look over the area. I nod when I’m reasonably sure it’s clear. Lynn darts out from the yard, passing me on the opposite side of the street, and takes up a position at the corner one house down. She looks for a moment and nods. I rise and stop in a similar position two houses later. I check the side yards, windows, cars, and listen. I nod and Lynn proceeds. In this fashion, we reach the end of the street.

The street ahead of us is the main road that runs by the high school. The sun is almost directly overhead. The afternoon has begun. We’ll have to move slower as we get closer to the camp. We have time but not enough to set up camp and tell war stories. The red truck cruising around has never left my mind and, for this reason, the road in front of me has me nervous. We’re far enough away and around a bend in the road from the towers so I’m not worried about being seen by anyone there. It’s the truck and any other wandering patrols they might have.

“You watch, I’ll go,” I say into the radio.

“I’ve got you,” Lynn responds.

I rise and, with a look to the left and right, dash across. Going slow or creeping across a road is a truly useless action. I settle into bushes on the far side and wait. Nothing.

“Go,” I say.

Lynn dashes across and joins me. We enter a small band of trees and turn south, entering another neighborhood and make our way slowly through. Nearing an area adjacent to the school, we scale another fence and enter a large wooded expanse filled with trails. The area between the various trails is dense so we should be able to keep from being seen as long as someone from the compound doesn’t decide to take their afternoon power walk. I always thought it was crazy to have a densely wooded area across from a high school but maybe that was me being jealous that I didn’t have one like it when I went to school. On further thought, it’s probably a good idea there wasn’t.

We find a secluded spot and settle in. “What are we doing? I thought we were going to leave these and head back,” Lynn asks taking out the steaks.

“We made better time than I thought and we have time. If we put these out too early, I’m afraid any animals or wandering packs of dogs might get to them rendering the whole idea moot,” I answer. “They still might but at least the smell may linger.”

“Good point,” she says settling in next to me.

We wait out the afternoon listening to the squirrels and other small animals scurry about. I’m surprised to an extent that there doesn’t seem to be a population decrease with night runners about but I guess they would only be an additional predator to them. Or the night runners haven’t ventured here as yet. A thought occurs wondering how long the night runners can live if they can only hunt at night. There aren’t really that many predators that hunt at night for the very reason that a lot of prey has gone to ground. I mean, the large prey can’t so maybe they’ll survive. I wonder how the behavior of animals will change with a dramatic increase in the amount of night predators. Lynn always said I had too much time on my hands and these thoughts are the result of said time.

Afternoon rays of sun reach the forest floor in small strips of light and take on a more brown-orange tint as the day heads into late afternoon. Rising from where I had laid down, I mention it’s time to go. We take out the steaks which have turned from the delicious looking red to a less delicious brown-gray. Tossing them into the surrounding brush, we retrace our route to a point close to the highway and turn south to rendezvous with the rest of the teams.

The sun is behind the hills turning the surrounding area into the blue-gray shade of dusk. All of us are in the trees just out of sight of the camp in a box formation. We’ll move up just before the pure dark of the night in order to situate ourselves. My nerves are riding high. Being out in the dark with this many bodies and night runners possibly lurking in the area makes me extremely nervous. We sprayed the scent eliminator but who knows just how helpful that is with the tremendous capabilities of the night runners. Greg and I have also donned our stalks of grass. Waiting has always been the hardest part for me. Let’s just get it done one way or the other as far as I’m concerned.

Darkness closes in and faint shrieks reach our position in the trees as if vocally signaling the official beginning of night. Other shrieks sound from the east; across the compound. It’s only a matter of time before the night runners venture this way.

“Henderson, Denton, do you have shots?” I ask quietly.

“Yes, sir. They’re all lined up as long as the spotlight is to the side,” Henderson answers for both.

“Okay, Greg, let’s move,” I say grabbing a ladder.

I move out the same as I did two nights prior. Only this time I have the ladder underneath me as I move forward lifting me a little higher than I’d like. The lights pan across a couple of times and I bury myself as far into the ground as I can get. The beam focuses primarily in the trees but this time, on the third pass, it is sweeping directly across the grass. Uh oh , I think lowering my head. The pounding in my heart increases to the point that I hope I’m not shaking the grass nearby. The ground lightens as the spotlight inches closer. Well, it pans but it feels like it moves in inches. The ground grows lighter by the second until I am bathed in its radiance. The light stops.

The individual stalks cast their own shadow in the beam’s intensity. I can’t see much as the goggles haven’t adjusted to the intensity of the light change as yet. I have my head burrowed so I haven’t achieved a white-out condition but the clarity is gone. Thoughts wonder as to why the light has stopped but deep down, I know we’ve been spotted. Rise now and take the shot? Why hasn’t Henderson or Denton taken the shot? I don’t dare move to press the mic button to tell them to do so before the guards get a radio call out. Lynn is there and she’ll make the right call. My job is to lie perfectly still. The light stays.