Liberty Run

Chapter Thirteen

“You should get some sleep,” Bertha said.

“I’m too excited to sleep!” Libby stated happily.

“Me, too,” Cole added.

They were seated at the wooden table in the cabin, a lantern in the center of the tabletop diffusing a soft yellow light throughout the room.

The rest of the Claws were asleep, curled up on blankets on the floor.

“Do you really think they’ll take us?” Libby queried in a low voice.

“They took me, didn’t they?” Bertha replied.

“Believe me, girl. The Family are the nicest bunch of folks you’d ever want to meet. We may have to cram the SEAL to the max, but Blade will agree to take you to the Home. I promise you.”

“This Blade you’ve been telling us about,” Cole said. “What’s he like?”

“He’s a righteous dude,” Bertha stated. “One of my best friends. He’s got more muscles than anyone else I know. And he’s tricky.”

“Tricky?” Cole repeated.

“I don’t know how else to describe him,” Bertha said. “He doesn’t look like the brainy type, but he fools you. Just when you think you’ve got him figured out, he catches you off guard. I guess clever is the word for Blade.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting him,” Cole said.

Libby scanned the sleeping Claws. “But will there be enough room in this SEAL of yours for all of us?”

Bertha surveyed the children. “I don’t know,” she acknowledged. “We might need to throw out some of our supplies. But we’ll find a way. Trust me.”

Libby stared at Bertha. “I haven’t trusted anyone for years.”

Bertha frowned. “How do you make a go of it? Where do you find your food?”

“We do a lot of hunting and fishing,” Cole detailed. “And we steal whatever we can get our hands on. We raid the nearby houses. Scrounge here and there.”

Bertha nodded at a row of eight AK-47’s leaning against the wall near the front door. “Where’d you get all the hardware?”

“Hunters,” Cole answered.

Bertha whistled. “You Claws must be real good if you wasted that many Hunters.”

“We get lots of practice,” Cole stated. “They send in about a Hunter a month.” He paused. “Funny.”

“What is?” Bertha asked.

“The Hunters,” Cole said. “Why do the fucking Russians only send in a Hunter at a time? Why not send in an army, and clean up Valley Forge in one day? And why do the Hunters only kill one Packrat, then split?”

“What?” Bertha leaned on her elbows on the table.

“That’s what they do,” Cole clarified. “They rack one Packrat, then leave. Four months ago Milly and Tommy were out picking berries. A damn Hunter popped up and blasted Tommy. Then he walked over to Milly, tickled her under the chin, and left.”

“Why would he do that?” Bertha queried in surprise.

“Cole has an idea,” Libby said.

“What is it?” Bertha prompted Cole.

The Claw leader gazed fondly at the slumbering Claws. “I think the Russians are using us as some kind of training exercise for their soldiers. I don’t think they want to wipe us out. I think they’re playing games with us, killing us off one at a time. Hell! They know we’re here! And they don’t usually let rebels keep on living. I know! They butchered my father and mother because my parents hated their guts!”

Bertha considered the theory. In a perverse sort of way, it made sense.

The Russians knew the orphaned, homeless kids were flocking to Valley Forge, yet did nothing to stop the influx. Cole had said earlier that the Russians used disguises, even befriended some of the Packrats before slaughtering them. Why else would the Soviets go to so much trouble, unless the soldiers, probably their top commandoes, were honing their deadly skills on the lives of the Packrats? She stared at Cole with new respect.

“If we can get them out of here,” Cole said, motioning toward the Claws, “I’ll be the happiest man alive.”

Bertha almost laughed at his use of the word “man.” She stopped herself, though. Cole’s parents, as Plato would say, had passed on to the higher mansions. Rather than submit to the Soviets, Cole had opted to resist. And now he was responsible for the lives of 15 others, for insuring they didn’t starve to death and weren’t killed by the Hunters, the mutants, or other Packrats. Perhaps he did qualify as a man, after all. “How many other Packrat gangs are there in Valley Forge?” she asked him.

“Four I know of,” Cole replied. “Maybe a few more. We each have our own turf to protect. The Bobcats are the closest to us, to the south a ways.

We have run-ins with them all the time.”

“Why don’t all of you band together?” Bertha inquired. “There’s strength in numbers.”

“Band together?” Cole said. “I don’t know. No one’s ever thought of it, I guess. Besides, everybody shoots first and asks questions later. If I tried to make the peace with, say, the Bobcats, I’d be shot before I could even open my mouth.”

“Sounds to me like you Packrats are playin’ into the Soviets’ hands,” Bertha mentioned.

“There’s nothing I can do about it,” Cole stated. “It’s been this way since before I came here.”

“How long have you been here?” Bertha asked.

“Three years,” Cole answered. “I wandered into Valley Forge after splitting from Phoenixville.”

“How’d you hook up with the Claws?” Bertha probed.

“They were the first Packrats to find me,” Cole said. “That’s the way it usually works. Strays are taken in by the first group they come across.”

Bertha shook her head. “I’m telling you! You bozos would do a lot better if you got organized. I used to belong to a gang in the Twin Cities, and I know what I’m talkin’ about.”

“You were in a gang?” Libby asked.

“Shhhhh!” Cole abruptly hissed.

Bertha glanced at the windows. Daylight was still an hour or two away, and the forest outside was shrouded in inky gloom.

“What is it?” Libby queried nervously.

Cole turned in his wooden chair and stared at the closed door. “I don’t know. I thought I heard something.”

“Could one of the other gangs, like the Bobcats, be sneakin’ up on you?” Bertha inquired.

Libby shook her head. “No one goes out in the woods at night. It’s too dangerous. The Packrats always hole up after dark.”

“What about the Hunters?” Bertha remarked.

“Sometimes they come after us at night,” Libby revealed. “But not often.”

“Shhhh!” Cole shushed them. He stood and walked to the left window, cautiously standing to the right of the glass and peering out.

“Anything?” Libby asked in a whisper.

“No,” Cole whispered back.

“I’ll go have a look,” Bertha proposed, rising. Her M-16 was propped against her chair. She grabbed it and moved to the doorway.

“If anyone’s going out there, it’ll be me,” Cole said.

“I can take care of myself,” Bertha informed him, her left hand on the doorknob. “You stay put and watch your Packrats.”

“Bertha!” Libby said.

Bertha hesitated. “What?”

“Be careful!” Libby advised. “We can’t afford to lose you! Not now!”

“Nothin’ will happen to me,” Bertha assured her. She opened the door, stepped outside, then closed it.

A strong wind was blowing in from the west, rustling the leaves on the trees. Above the cabin stars were visible.

Bertha faced into the wind, enjoying the cool tingle on her skin. She was feeling fatigued, and was glad dawn was not far off. Cole, Libby, and the rest could go with her to the SEAL. She hoped Blade and Sundance were still there.

A twig snapped.

Bertha was instantly on guard, warily raising the M-16 and searching the woods for an intruder, human or otherwise. She advanced toward the trees, bypassing the re-covered pit near the front door. The light from the cabin windows provided a faint glow to the edge of the trees. Bertha reached the tree line and stopped, crouching.

The wind was whipping the limbs, creating a subdued clatter, mixed with the creaking of branches and the swishing of leaves.

Bertha strained her senses.

An audible scraping arose from the forest directly ahead.

Was it two limbs rubbing together? Bertha craned her neck and tilted her head, believing she could hear better.

Instead, she exposed her neck to the unseen lurker in the woods. A rope suddenly snaked out of the darkness, and a loop settled over her head and neck. Before she could react, Bertha was hauled from her feet and onto her stomach, the loop tightening about her neck, forming a noose, even as whoever was on the other end of the rope gave it a tremendous tug.

Bertha landed with the M-16 underneath her abdomen. She rolled, expecting her assailant to charge, but her attacker had another idea. The rope was yanked taut, and it felt like her head was being wrenched from her neck. Her breath was cut off, and she gagged as she struggled to her knees and released the M-16, clutching at the noose, her fingers urgently striving to pry the rope loose.

A burly man burst from cover, a 15-inch survival knife in his right hand, the rope in his left. He was dressed all in black, and his head was covered with a black mask. The knife extended, he rushed from behind a tree five yards away.

Damn! Bertha knew he had been waiting for her to drop the M-16! She let go of the rope and dived for the M-16, but her foe was already upon her.

The man in black launched his hefty body into a flying tackle, dropping the rope, and his left arm caught Bertha around the neck and drove her back, her desperate fingers inches from the M-16, and slammed her to the ground, onto her back, with him on top of her.

Bertha grunted and jerked her head to the right, and the survival knife plunged into the ground next to her left ear.

The man in black swept the knife up for another blow.

Bertha bucked and heaved, unbalancing her opponent, causing him to teeter to the right. She brought her right fist up and cuffed him on the cheek.

The man in black slashed at her face.

Bertha turned her face aside, but felt the keen edge of the survival knife slice open her right cheek.

The man stabbed at her right eye.

Bertha narrowly evaded the knife. Her left hand clutched his right wrist and held on fast.

He clamped his left hand on her throat.

Bertha was in dire straits. She was tiring, and tiring rapidly. She needed to do something, anything, to gain the advantage, or she was lost.

Her years of street fighting served her in good stead. She jabbed her right hand upward, burying her forefinger in her attacker’s left eye.

The man in black yelped, and his grip on her throat slackened.

Exerting her strength to its limits, Bertha surged her hips and stomach off the ground, tumbling the assassin over her head. She scrambled to her hands and knees, twisting to confront her foe.

He was superbly trained. Even as he landed on the dank earth, the man in black tumbled, coming out of the roll and straightening, whirling toward the woman in green.

The cabin door unexpectedly opened, spilling more light outside, bathing Bertha and the man with the survival knife.

The man in black spun, anticipating a threat from the cabin. For a fleeting moment, his back was to Bertha.

In a twinkling, Bertha struck. She shoved off from the ground, bringing her right foot up and around, executing one of the karate kicks taught to her by Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, the Family’s supreme martial artist. It was a basic roundhouse kick, a Mawashi-geri, and it connected with the man in black between his shoulder blades.

The man in the mask was knocked forward by Bertha’s kick. He tripped and toppled onto the makeshift latticework covering the pit. The limbs and reeds rent with a resounding crash, and the man in black sank into the pit.

Cole ran from the cabin, a lantern in his left hand, an AK-47 in his right. He halted at the pit rim.

Bertha saw the fury on Cole’s features, and she surmised his intent at one glance. “Cole! No!” she shouted.

To no avail.

“Here, bastard!” Cole barked, and squeezed the trigger.

Bertha froze in midstride. She looked down, unable to prevent the inevitable.

The man in black was just scrambling to his feet when the slugs plowed into his chest and flung him against the pit wall. His body twitched and thrashed as more and more rounds were poured into him. A linear pattern of crimson geysers erupted across his torso, then angled higher, stitching a red path from his chin to the top of his head. The firing ceased, and the man in the mask pitched onto his face.

Cole gazed at his handiwork, smirking.

“You didn’t have to do that!” Bertha exclaimed, panting.

Cole glanced at her. “Yes, I did.”

“We could of questioned him!” Bertha stated. “He was a Hunter, right?”

“Without a doubt,” Cole said.

Bertha doubled over, her ribs aching. “You didn’t have to do that!” she reiterated.

Cole stared at the startled Claws emerging from the cabin, a few rubbing their sleepy eyes. He looked at Bertha, the set of his jaw determined and straight, and then at the corpse in the pit. “Yes, I did,” he insisted softly.

This time. Bertha didn’t argue.