Fall (Part 3)

Riding a horse down a mountain while simultaneously trying to balance a half-conscious man who weighs twice as much as you do in front of you is not as easy as it sounds. Pete felt like he was going to topple off the horse at any second the entire way down the mountain, and I didn't dare go any faster than a trot. When we finally made it back to town, the sun had been down for a few hours already, and I was frantic to turn around and start back up the south side to look for Joel.

By the time Maria and Tommy met me at the stables, every muscle in my body was strung so tight with tension that I almost cried out in relief when I saw them. "Maria! Those fucking bandits are going to try and blow up the dam tomorrow, but you should talk to Pete, he knows more about it, but he's hurt pretty bad so I sent him on up to Doc already, and they captured Joel and I don't know what they're fucking doing to him so I only need like eight or ten guys and we can go get him out of there..." The words tumbled out of my mouth in one long run-on sentence, tangling themselves in my tongue.

"Ellie, stop. Stop!" Maria interrupted me. "Slow down, and tell me everything, from the beginning."

So I did, and Maria's every interruption and request to repeat myself was an agony. I was wasting too much time. I was watching Tommy when I described the bandits, and when I said Michael's name, all the blood drained from his face.

"Oh, shit. Oh, fuck," he said.

Maria looked at him sharply. "Michael? Not the same Michael you told me about? From Philadelphia?"

"He called Joel Killer," I said.

Tommy's face was gray. He looked like he was about to pass out.

"Fucking...fuck." He turned to Maria. "It's the same guy."

"What the fuck is he doing here in Wyoming?" Maria demanded.

"I don't fucking know, Maria! I haven't seen that sick fuck for twenty years. I was really hopin' he'd be dead by now." Tommy ran a shaking hand through his hair.

"Can he really blow up our dam?" Maria asked.

"Pete said something about C4," I said, trying to be helpful.

Tommy nodded. "He was ex-military. Fucking British special forces or something. If anyone could get their hands on shit like that and know how to use it, it would be him."

"Fuck." Maria pulled her walkie off her hip and keyed it. "Matt? Send Donovan and Goldberg over to my place for an emergency war council. I want Red Team and Green Team pulled off the wall immediately. Take them to the armory, load them up, and get the fuck over to the dam."

"Copy, Maria. What the fuck is going on?"

"Donovan will brief you when she catches up. Be careful and shoot anything that moves. Don't let anything near that power plant. And hurry the fuck up. Maria out." She keyed off the walkie and clipped it to her belt again.

"Maria," I said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice, "What about my team? I need ten guys, but I could probably do it with five, but ten would be better, because I don't know how many of those fuckheads are up there..."

"Ellie." The genuine pain in Maria's voice brought me up short, and I sucked in my breath, the terrible, sure knowledge of what she was going to say next a lump of lead in my stomach. "You know what's going down tomorrow. I can't spare ten guys. I can't spare five. I can't even fucking spare you."

"No...you..." I couldn't catch my breath. I appealed to Tommy. "It's Joel! It's your fucking brother, Tommy!" My voice was shrill, on the edge of hysteria, but Tommy didn't offer any help. His face was already sagging with sorrow. I turned back to Maria. "I thought you were my friend! How could you just leave him there?" The tears I'd been fighting all afternoon started to fall, and I lashed out angrily. "If you don't let me out of here to get him, I will never forgive you, you fucking bitch!"

Maria flinched like I'd slapped her, and then said in a low voice, "I'm not letting you commit suicide, and that's my final decision. Whether you forgive me or not is up to you." She turned to Tommy and said, "Take care of her. Get her home, and try to get her to sleep. I need her on the dam tomorrow." And with that, she turned on her heel and hurried down the street.

Oh, god. How could this be happening? I'd made the wrong choice. I'd saved Pete and warned the town and now Joel was going to die because of what I'd done. I sank to my knees right there in the street, my legs no longer capable of holding me up.

"Ellie..." Tommy reached out his hand toward my shaking shoulder, but I pushed his arm away violently.

"Don't fucking touch me."

And then Tommy was on his knees in front of me, his fingers squeezing my shoulders hard enough to leave bruises. "Ellie, listen to me." The urgency in his voice cut through my haze of panic and grief. "Maria is wrong about this. She worries so much about the town that she can't let herself worry about any one person, and she's wrong about this. Are you hearin' me?"

I looked at him and nodded, a bright star of hope flaring to life in my chest. "Are you going to help me?" I didn't know what I would do if he said no.

"Yes, I'll help you. He's my fucking brother."

Before he finished his sentence, I wrapped my arms around him, the flood of relief making me almost dizzy. Tommy squeezed me back and said, "We'll get him back, Ellie. He's got a little time. Michael will let him stew overnight; he always said that the anticipation just sweetened their fear." The look of disgust on Tommy's face spoke whole volumes.

"Jesus."

Tommy helped me to my feet. "We're gonna need some help, but I can't take a bunch of people off defense. Maria may never forgive me as it is."

"Who can we take?"

Tommy looked at me reluctantly. "You ain't gonna like it."

Tommy was right. I didn't like it. My exact words to him were, "No fucking way, Tommy. Never in a million fucking years." And yet, here I was, knocking on his door.

He was the best tracker we had, Tommy had argued, and one of the best snipers, but he wasn't on either of the teams Maria had assigned to the dam, so he wouldn't be missed right away. Still, when Sanjay opened his door to my knock I had some mixed fucking feelings, to put it mildly.

"Oh, hey, Ellie. Tommy." He eyed me warily, keeping the door partially between me and his body.

"Your balls are safe for now," I said. "I need your help."

"Hey, babe, who's at the door?" came a voice from inside the house. A woman wandered into the hallway behind Sanjay, and I was surprised to see Max, from Joel's construction crew. The same woman I'd been jealous of this morning. God, was it only this morning? It felt like a year ago.

Max froze when she saw me, and then said, "You've got a lot of nerve coming here, Ellie."

"What?" I was bewildered by her hostility. Max and I had always pretty much gotten along.

Sanjay held out his hand to her and she took it. "It's okay, Max. They need help."

Max snorted. "That's what Maria said last time. Look where that got you."

I shook my head. There was a lot going on here, but I didn't have time to think about any of it, so I just ignored it and got right to the point. "Look, Joel's in danger, and I need your help."

I don't know if it was Joel's name or the desperation in my voice that conveyed the urgency of our mission, but when Tommy said, "Can we come in?" Sanjay and Max both stepped back from the door and let us in without another word.

I told the whole story again, sitting in Sanjay's living room, trying to be as succinct as possible. Every minute that ticked by I felt like I was betraying Joel by not moving toward him.

"So, the three of us, going against Maria's express orders, up against an unknown number of heavily armed paramilitary bandits, led by a fucking psychopath. Sounds great. What could possibly go wrong?" Sanjay said.

My heart fell.

"Sanjay, I know it doesn't sound good," Tommy said. "But you're the only person in town not already headed to the dam who can help us."

"Last resort." Sanjay's voice was bitter. "Yeah. I get that. Ellie wouldn't be here otherwise. Maria hasn't been using me much since..." He looked at me for a moment, and then said, "Hey, guys, can I talk to Ellie in private for a few minutes?"

Max gave me a hard look, then said, "Sure. Tommy and I can go fix some snacks."

My stomach growled at the mention of food. When was the last time I ate anything? Must have been breakfast this morning, and I puked up most of that at the cabin. "Thanks, Max." I was subdued. I still wasn't really sure why she was being so hostile toward me. She and Sanjay obviously had a thing going, and she obviously felt protective of him, but I was the wounded party here, wasn't I?

I was really uncomfortable being in the room alone with Sanjay. What he'd done still hurt, and it still made me angry if I thought about it too much. But I needed his help now too much to let myself get angry.

Sanjay didn't say anything, but he stood up and picked up two big ammo cans from the corner of the room and put them down in front of me. "Most of that is .30-06. I know that'll work in that Remington you carry for wall duty. The rest you can trade for a caliber you need. There're some .22 cartridges in there too."

I just stared at the cans. I knew exactly what they were: Sanjay's winnings from the betting pool. The thought of touching them made my skin crawl. Finally, I said, "No. You should keep it. You earned it, after all." I tried, but I couldn't keep the bitterness out of my voice.

"No! Fucking..." He ran his hand through his short black hair, making it stand up on end. "I don't fucking want it!" He sat down and looked me in the eye. "Ellie, I joined that fucking pool the first month I was here. I didn't know you from a hole in the wall, but I was new and I was having a hard time fitting in here, everyone's so fucking tight-knit, and I'd been on my own for so long..."

Despite myself, I felt a pang of sympathy for him. I knew what it was like trying to fit in here. I still felt like an outsider, even after five years, and I remembered when Sanjay had joined the community three years back, he'd been reticent and shy. I realized I had never asked him about his life before he came to Jackson, and I wondered if he'd even talk about it if I did.

"And then, I just forgot about it. I got to know you, and you were pretty and fun and smart and a hell of a good shot, and I was glad to have a friend who liked to tell bad jokes and didn't mind if I didn't talk much," he said.

"So why the fuck did you kiss me that night, you asshole?" I couldn't keep the anger out of my voice this time.

He grimaced. "I knew you were in love with Joel the first time I ever saw you two together, so when Maria talked to me, I was happy for the chance to play Cupid. But, ah..." He puffed out his cheeks and then blew his breath out. "I kissed you that night mostly because I wanted to, and I didn't think I'd ever get another chance. I'm really, really sorry, Ellie. I shouldn't have done it."

I stared at Sanjay and felt my memories and perceptions realigning themselves. Sanjay had liked me. Like that. And I hadn't had a fucking clue. He hadn't just been trying to win some awful bet, he'd really been trying to help me with Joel, despite his own feelings for me. And afterward, I'd been really horrible to him. Shit. This also explained why Max had been trying to glare holes through me. "Sanjay, I...fuck. I wish you'd told me all this sooner." I didn't know if I meant how he felt about me or his real intentions that night, but I had to say something.

He smiled wryly. "Well, after the festival you didn't really give me a chance. Besides, Joel cornered me the next day and told me if I came anywhere near you he'd fucking kill me, and I took him at his word. And before...well. It wouldn't have really made a difference, would it?"

I thought about Joel, and how we'd been basically attached at the hip since we came here. We were one entity, not two people, even before we started sleeping together. There was no room for anyone else. "No," I said.

We were silent for a moment, and then I said, "So, how long have you and Max been..."

He smiled, a genuine smile this time, and I realized how much I'd missed seeing that. I could count on Sanjay to reliably laugh at all my stupid jokes, even when everybody else just rolled their eyes. "A couple months. We've been keeping it quiet because Max wasn't sure how Joel would react, considering the death threat and everything."

"Ah. Yeah. I'm sorry about that. He can be a little overprotective." That may have been the understatement of the fucking century.

Sanjay laughed. "You could say that." He stuck his hand out to me. "Friends?"

I shook it. "Friends." It felt good, and I hung on to the feeling as long as I could before my worry for Joel once again dominated my thoughts. "Sanjay, I don't know how much longer Joel has left, or even if he's still alive. Will you help me get him back?"

Tommy and Max came back into the room, carrying a plate of bread and cheese, with pickled beets and onions, and four bottles of beer.

"Yeah, I'll help you. Three of us against a fucking army? Sounds like a good time."

"Four of us," Max said. "Joel's my friend too, and if you think I'm letting you out of my sight, you're a moron." She put her arms around Sanjay. "I can handle myself fine with a bow, and I have an AR-15, too. I can watch Sanjay's back while he does his thing."

I nodded. I wasn't going to turn down help that was offered, especially when it came with an assault rifle. "Okay, let's figure out how we're going to do this."

In the end, we could only really plan our escape from Jackson. Without knowing how many bandits there were or what we were really up against, we'd just have to get there, do some reconnaissance, and plan to be flexible. Tommy thought our small number worked for us because it would make it easier to infiltrate the enemy camp, but I still wished I was going up there at the head of an army, not a motley crew of four.

Tommy and I caught a few hours of fitful sleep on Sanjay's couch, and we all headed for the gate a few hours before dawn. Tommy's plan was simple: we'd get to the gate during the 3 a.m. shift change, and during the confusion he'd tell the guards that Maria wanted us to run a perimeter check from the outside. It wasn't an uncommon occurrence, although I didn't know how jumpy the gate guards would be, due to the impending attack. If they double-checked our story with Maria, we were fucked. Tommy was our ace in the hole, because as Maria's husband, they wouldn't be expecting him to lie about it.

We wouldn't take horses because we'd be quieter on foot, but that meant hiking a few miles at least. We didn't know how far into the forest the camp was; that was where Sanjay's tracking skills would come in. Still, I was nervous about how much time it would take us to even find the camp, much less come up with a plan once we got there. I hoped Michael liked to sleep in, but given what I already knew about him I thought it was unlikely.

The first part of the plan went without a hitch. The guards who let us through the gate were coming off a 12-hour shift, and they just took Tommy at his word without checking his story. We were making our way down the fence to an area where the trees provided a little more cover when I heard the soft, metallic click of a gun.

"I could have you all up in front of the town council on charges of treason." It was Maria. She melted out of the trees and lowered the revolver she was pointing at us, and said to Tommy, "You asshole. You were going to just leave without saying goodbye?"

"Maria..." He said.

She raised her hand to stop him. "I know. I'm not stupid. I figured it out when you didn't come home. For the record, I still think it's a terrible idea. But if it was you up there..." She looked at me, and then back at Tommy. "I'd be doing the same thing."

And then they were in each other's arms, clinging to each other like it was the last time they'd see each other. Maria kissed him and leaned her forehead against his. "If you don't come back to me, I will fucking murder you."

Tommy squeezed her tightly. "I love you. Watch your back today."

Maria nodded, unable to speak, and then looked at me. "Good luck." She turned then and headed back toward the gate, and didn't look back.

Sanjay breathed a sigh of relief and muttered, "Well, it's good to know that if we make it back alive we probably won't be kicked out of town."

And with that, we headed up the trail in the early morning darkness.

I would have missed the turnoff to the camp completely if Sanjay hadn't been with us. It was during that twilight time right before dawn, when the sky starts to lighten and everything looks uniformly gray. I walked right by it, straining my eyes to see the wheeler tracks on the path, but Sanjay said, "Huh. That's weird," and bent down to examine the right side of the path, clicking his flashlight on to see a little better.

The excitement in his voice brought me circling back to him. "Hey, look at this, Ellie."

And then I saw it too: wheeler tracks that were running not along the trail, but in a perpendicular line across it, terminating in a heavy growth of underbrush.

"It's a false barrier," he said, after examining it for a few seconds. "A fucking good one. You can't even tell if you're not right on top of it." He grabbed my shoulder when I tried to get past him. "Wait. Look." He shone his flashlight at a spot near the ground. I didn't see anything for a second, and then the light gleamed on a thin metal wire that stretched across the edges of the barrier, a few inches from the ground.

"A tripwire," Max said. She'd seen it at almost the same time I had.

"We'll have to watch every step. They're liable to have the entire approach to their camp booby-trapped all to hell," Tommy said, his face grim.

"Must make getting in and out of here on the four-wheelers a real pain in the ass," I said.

Tommy thought about it for a second. "Michael used to have us set traps when everyone was in for the night, and then we'd take everything down again when we headed out in the morning. He called it closing up shop. And he was always real thorough about it. If we go through there right now, there's a good chance none of us will make it to the camp. So our best bet for getting through..."

"Is to wait until they leave for the dam," I finished. Damn it. It made sense, but would they keep Joel alive that long?

Tommy said, "It's your call, Ellie."

I clenched my jaw. Being in charge sucked. "Do you think there's any way we could bypass the trail? Just come at them through the woods?"

Tommy shook his head. "Michael's too smart for that. He'll have picked a location he could defend. That trail is probably the only way in."

I nodded. I figured as much, but I had to ask. "Do you think..." I swallowed hard. "Do you think they'll kill Joel before they leave?"

Tommy looked deeply unhappy. "I don't know, Ellie. Michael liked to think of himself as the general of his little army, so he may just be sending a team out to the dam. But if he's leading them there himself...then he'll want to tie up any loose ends before he leaves camp for the day."

Fuck. My chest ached like I was being stabbed. I looked at Tommy and Sanjay and Max. This was like deciding to save Pete or not all over again. Did I throw us all headlong into certain danger, knowing none of us might even make it past the booby-trapped trail, or did I just wait and hope Joel was still alive when they disarmed the traps, giving us a better chance to get up there in one piece? I was starting to understand why Maria looked so careworn and stressed out all the time. Being responsible for the lives of other people was a heavy fucking burden.

Sanjay and Max were looking at me, their faces drawn with worried sympathy. I knew they would follow me, if I told them we were going up the trail now. I let my breath out. "We wait. Let's find some cover." Joel, I'm coming for you. Just hang in there a little longer. I felt awful hoping that Michael would actually draw out whatever suffering he had in mind for Joel, but it was my best hope of rescuing him in the end.

I'm not sure how long we sat there in the bushes on the other side of the trail, waiting for something to happen, but the sun was already starting to climb in the sky when Sanjay touched my arm and pointed to his ear. The whine of engines got closer and closer, until we saw a group of men carefully disarming the tripwire and moving the barrier aside. They streamed through, four four-wheelers, heavily loaded with equipment, and sixteen men on foot. Michael wasn't with them; I felt like I could breathe again. The last guys through replaced the barrier, but didn't reset the tripwire. I guess Tommy had been right about them only setting the traps at night.

We waited until the group was out of sight, and then cautiously made our way across to the barrier. "Keep an eye out for traps, there may still be a few. And he may have men posted on the approach, so keep quiet," Tommy said.

We all nodded. Max said, "Good luck, everybody." And with that, we moved into enemy territory.

I think the element of surprise was the only thing that kept us from getting our stupid asses killed that day. Michael's group had been in the area at least a month; it was enough time to dig in, but also enough time to get complacent. There were a few guards in the woods along the first part of the trail. Tommy snuck up on the first guard we saw from behind and choked him. It startled me a little; I'd seen Joel do the same thing so many times, I really noticed how Tommy moved the same way and had the same, well, rhythm, to his kill as his brother. I wondered if it was something they'd learned together. The next guard saw Sanjay sneaking through the bushes, but I stuck my knife in his jugular before he got off a cry.

At this point the trail narrowed down and ran along the mountainside. There was a steep, wooded dropoff on one side and a rock face on the other, which I suppose was one of the reasons Michael chose the location. The bottleneck here was totally exposed, and as far as I could tell there was no way to avoid it.

"I know where he is," Tommy said, when he saw the trail. "This curves around and lets out onto a big meadow with a lake. He would have wanted to set up near water. I spent some time fishing up there a few years back."

"Do you think they have somebody covering that section of the path? Maybe up in one of the trees?" I asked him.

He grimaced. "I don't know. Maybe. But I don't know any other way to get to that lake that won't take us all day."

I nodded and looked out at the trail. It looked deceptively pleasant, the early morning sun dappled with shade from the evergreen trees that grew on the hillside and towered over the path. We were still under the cover of the forest here. I took a deep breath. "Okay. This is what's going to happen. Sanjay, you work your way out as far as you can, but stay under the cover of the trees, and be ready to shoot. Max, you keep an eye out for any reflections or muzzle flashes in those trees along the path. Tommy, I need you to hang back. If shit goes down and it looks like you can pull me out, do it, otherwise all of you get the fuck out of here and don't let them catch you." I set my jaw in determination. "I'm going out there."

Tommy protested like I knew he would, but in the end I was more stubborn than he was. This was my show, and I was the one who would take the risk, end of story. I crouched and moved out onto the path as slowly and carefully as I could. I was wearing brown and gray, which would help me blend in with the background as long as I didn't move too abruptly. I still felt like I had a big fucking target painted on my back.

I was maybe three-quarters of the way across when I heard a crack and the rock right next to my face exploded, sending stinging stone chips into my cheek.

Fuck! I hit the ground so fast I knocked the wind out of myself, and then bounced to my feet and started running. I was too far out to make it back to the trees where the rest of the group was, my only hope now was to make for where the path curved out of sight around the mountain, where Tommy had said it opened out again, and hope the shooter was lousy at hitting a moving target.

There was another gunshot and I braced myself for a hit, but this time there was a grunt from high up in a big pine tree and a body toppled to the ground, thirty feet down the hillside from me. I turned back and gave Sanjay the thumbs-up. I picked my way cautiously to the curve in the trail and peeked around it, hoping the gunshots hadn't been noticed. The trail ahead was empty and led into a copse of trees, and beyond that was the meadow and the lake, just like Tommy said. The mountain ridge curved around and cupped the meadow in a shallow arc on two sides, and on the far side of the open area, snugged up against the ridge, was a collection of tents. I saw a few men moving around in the camp, but nobody was running toward the trail.

I went back around the curve and waved my team forward. When they joined me, we moved up into the trees. Tommy grimaced when he saw the terrain ahead. "I don't fucking like this. There's no cover...they'll see us coming a mile away. How are we gonna get to those tents?"

I looked at the near side of the lake for a long moment, where big clumps of reeds grew and could obscure us for some of the way, but they thinned out to bare ground about halfway down the shoreline. An idea was starting to form in my mind. I picked up a rock, hefting it in my hand, and then I turned to Sanjay. "Can you do any good from here?"

Sanjay considered the camp, then shook his head. "No, it's too far. It's over a mile, at least. I'm good, but those would be long fucking shots."

I nodded. "Okay, where can you do the most damage?"

He looked over the terrain, and then pointed at the ridge. "Up there. I'll have elevation, and it gets me way closer. Hell, if the ridge goes all the way across, I can set up in their back yard."

"Good. Do it. How long do you think it will take you to get in place?"

"Thirty minutes, if we move now," Max said. Sanjay nodded in agreement. "Looks like there's a little bit of a climb, but there's a trail." She pointed to a tiny game trail that I'd missed, winding up the steep, rocky face of the ridge.

"All right, guys. Be careful. I'll try to give you as much time as possible, but when shit starts happening it's likely to happen fast. And Sanjay, if you see a tall dude with silver hair, shoot him in the fucking eye."

Sanjay smiled a ghost of a grin, and then he and Max started up the trail to the ridge.

I looked at Tommy, weighing the rock in my hand. "Do you remember how to snorkel?"

The summer Joel taught me how to swim, we'd made up a game where we'd breathe through hollow reeds and try to sneak up on each other underwater. When he'd catch me, he'd lift me up over the water and throw me as far as he could, while I giggled and shrieked my head off. When I caught him, I'd climb up on his shoulders and he'd wade out as deep as he could and then I'd launch myself off him, diving deep enough to touch the bottom of the reservoir. I'd been sixteen, and Joel had been invincible. Untouchable. I remembered his strong arms cradling me in the water, and the feeling of weightlessness when he threw me through the air, and I wondered if that was when I started falling in love with him, or if there was some other little thing that started it. Or maybe there was no one thing, just the sum of everything.

Unlike the pleasant coolness of the reservoir in the summertime, the lake water was fucking freezing. Up this high in the mountains, it was probably all runoff from melted snow, and it was fall, so it wasn't like it was the warmest day of the year. Tommy and I had worked our way along the lakeshore as far as we could before the cover of the reeds disappeared. When we couldn't go any farther, we cut reeds for ourselves and waded in.

Holding heavy rocks in both hands kept us weighted down so we didn't make much of a ripple as we walked along the lake bed, breathing through our makeshift snorkels. This is crazy, I thought as I pushed through the murky water. If this actually works, I'll fucking shit myself.

Tommy had accepted my plan without too much protest, except to remind me that the water would be fucking cold and we'd probably get hypothermia before we made it halfway. But in the end we didn't have much choice. The water provided the only cover available, and we had to use it. It wasn't that far to go, but my hands and feet were turning numb by the time we reached the cover of a cluster of reeds near the camp. We hauled ourselves out of the water, shivering, and just huddled together for a few minutes, trying to share the meager warmth in our bodies until the morning sun thawed us out enough to go on.

"Let's not do that again," I whispered, my teeth chattering.

"You said it, not me," Tommy said, blowing on his shaking hands.

Once we stopped shaking, we crouched there in the cover of the reeds and checked out the arrangement of tents. We were in a good spot, off to the side, behind a little cluster of two- and three-man tents that were probably being used just for sleeping in, and we could see bigger, square, building-style tents over closer to the ridge. "Where's the most likely spot for them to be holding him?" I breathed in Tommy's ear.

He jerked his chin toward the big tents. "One of those, but there's no telling which one."

I nodded. "Okay. We'll have to check each one. I'll go up the right side, you you think you can make your way over to the left? We can meet in the middle."

Tommy opened his mouth and for a second it looked like he was going to argue with me. Then he snapped his mouth shut and nodded, frowning. "Be careful."

"Duh. You too."

I crept forward in a crouch to the line of tents, breathing evenly to quiet my heartbeat and listening for any movement. My revolver was in my hip holster, my rifle in a holster across my back, and I held a six-inch hunting knife in my hand. My mother's switchblade was tucked into my bra, mostly for luck.

I made it to the line of bigger tents, and I saw that there was a narrow alleyway of space between the backs of the tents and the ridge, enough for me to creep behind them. When I got to the first tent, I stopped and put my ear up to the canvas, but I couldn't hear any movement inside. As slowly as I could, I inserted the point of my knife into the cloth and pulled down, the sharp edge of my blade making barely a whisper as it ripped through the canvas. When the slit was long enough, I put my eye up to the hole. The tent was full of boxes and containers; supplies, or an armory. Nobody was inside. I suppressed my disappointment and moved on to the next tent in the line.

As I crept forward past the narrow alley between tents that led back out to the center of the camp, I wrinkled my nose in disgust. The ground here reeked of piss, to the point that the ammonia was making my eyes water. Someone was obviously using this spot as a convenient latrine, which meant I needed to hurry the fuck up before…

"Well, hello there, pet."

I sprang to my feet and whirled around, holding my knife in front of me, my heart hammering in my chest. I knew that voice.

Michael was standing there, his hands at ease at his sides and a faint, disbelieving smile on his face, like he'd just seen a dog do a card trick. "You're a long way from home."

I lunged for him with my knife, but the guy was so fast I didn't even realize what had happened until he had my arm twisted behind my back and one hand on the back of my head, pressing my face into the piss-soaked dirt. "Fucking let me go, you fucking fuck!" I yelled. The more I struggled, the harder he yanked my arm, until it felt like my shoulder was about to come out if its socket.

"I really do despair for the vocabulary of the younger generation," he said. He let go of my head and straightened up when I stopped fighting him, but kept the pressure on my arm. "Just lie still for a moment, love. You interrupted me." I felt a boot shoved into the small of my back, and then heard the dry click of a zipper being undone. When the stream of urine splashed onto the ground near my face, I screwed up my eyes and mouth in shock and jerked back, but Michael just pulled back on my arm again until tears of pain and humiliation burned my eyes. I could feel droplets of warm piss hitting my face, splashing up from the ground.

When he was done, I heard him zip up again, and then he was pulling me to my feet while I spat mud and urine out of mouth. "What the fuck is wrong with you, you sick motherfucker?" I asked, scrubbing my mouth with my free hand.

He ignored me. "Now. I'm faster and stronger than you. So I'm going to let go of your arm now and you're going to be a good girl and let me disarm you, and I won't have to hurt you any more."

Right. Like I believed that. When he reached for my revolver, I turned around and tried to knee him in the balls. He punched me, hard, in the stomach, and I went down on my knees on the urine-soaked ground again, coughing and gagging.

"You've got spirit, kitten. I'll give you that," he said as he stripped my guns from me. I'd dropped the hunting knife when he'd first attacked me, and he picked it up and tucked it into his belt. "I do hope you don't break too quickly."

As he dragged me to my feet, I realized he'd missed my switchblade, still tucked into my bra, under my left breast. I concentrated on its comforting weight against my skin as Michael's hand clamped down on my shoulder like a steel trap.

Author's Note

Cover Me Up will continue *very soon* in Fall (Part 4).